and her large pleading eyes seemed as if they could neither
kindle with anger nor harden to freezing glances of scorn.

As for the Fairy Queen, he looked from the picture to its original,
and felt constrained to admit that, wondrously beautiful as he had
thought its likeness on canvas, the face before him was infinitely
superior to the painter's fairest and most cherished work.

Dick went away of course almost immediately, though sorely against his
will. Contrary to her wont, Miss Algernon, who was rather a mimic and
full of fun, neither imitated the gestures nor ridiculed the bearing
of this chance visitor. "She had not observed him much," she said,
when taxed by Simon with this unusual forbearance. This was false. But
"she might know him again, perhaps, if they met." This, I imagine, was
true.

And Dick, wending his way back to his hotel buried in thought, passed
without recognising it the spot where he met Lady Bearwarden one short
hour ago. He was pondering, no doubt, on the face he had just seen--on
its truth, its purity, its fresh innocent mirth, its dazzling beauty,
more, perhaps, than on its extraordinary likeness to hers who had
brought him the one great misfortune of his life.

CHAPTER XIX

AN INCUBUS

It is not to be supposed that any gentleman can see a lady in the
streets of London and remain himself unseen. In the human as in meaner
races the female organ of perception is quicker, keener, and more
accurate than the male. Therefore it is that a man bowing in Pall Mall
or Piccadilly to some divinity in an open carriage, and failing to
receive any return for his salute, sinks at once into a false position
of awkwardness and discomfiture, _il a manque son coup_, and his face
assumes incontinently the expression of one who has missed a woodcock
in the open, and has no second barrel with which to redeem his shot.
As Dick saw Lady Bearwarden in Oxford Street, we may be sure that Lady
Bearwarden also saw Dick. Nor was her ladyship best pleased with the
activity he displayed in avoiding her carriage and escaping from her
society. If Mr. Stanmore had been the most successful Lovelace who
ever devoted himself to the least remunerative of pursuits, instead
of a loyal, kindhearted, unassuming gentleman, he could hardly have
chosen a line of conduct so calculated to keep alive some spark of
interest in Maud's breast as that which he unconsciously adopted. It
is one thing to dismiss a lover because suit