he had spared him;--but then she could afford to joke,
thinking that he would surely come back to her.

She had begun her world with so fatal a mistake! When she was quite
young, when she was little more than a child but still not a child,
she had given all her love to a man whom she soon found that it would
be impossible she should ever marry. He had offered to face the world
with her, promising to do the best to smooth the rough places, and to
soften the stones for her feet. But she, young as she was, had felt
that both he and she belonged to a class which could hardly endure
poverty with contentment. The grinding need for money, the absolute
necessity of luxurious living, had been pressed upon her from her
childhood. She had seen it and acknowledged it, and had told him,
with precocious wisdom, that that which he offered to do for her sake
would be a folly for them both. She had not stinted the assurance of
her love, but had told him that they must both turn aside and learn
to love elsewhere. He had done so, with too complete readiness!
She had dreamed of a second love, which should obliterate the
first,--which might still leave to her the memory of the romance of
her early passion. Then this boy had come in her way! With him all
her ambition might have been satisfied. She desired high rank and
great wealth. With him she might have had it all. And then, too,
though there would always be the memory of that early passion, yet
she could in another fashion love this youth. He was pleasant to her,
and gracious;--and she had told herself that if it should be so that
this great fortune might be hers, she would atone to him fully for
that past romance by the wife-like devotion of her life. The cup had
come within the reach of her fingers, but she had not grasped it. Her
happiness, her triumphs, her great success had been there, present to
her, and she had dallied with her fortune. There had been a day on
which he had been all but at her feet, and on the next he had been
prostrate at the feet of another. He had even dared to tell her
so,--saying of that American that "of course he loved her the best!"

Over and over again since that, she had asked herself whether there
was no chance. Though he had loved that other one best she would take
him if it were possible. When the invitation came from the Duke she
would not lose a chance. She had told him that it was impossible that
he, the heir to the Duke of Omnium, should marry an