ant a
companion--a dummy will do. Take a box and sit behind the curtain,
back to the audience.

"I wrote to my wine-merchant to send Champagne and Sherry. I hope
he did: the Champagne in pints and half-pints; if not, return them
instantly. I know how Economy, sitting solitary, poor thing, would
not dare to let the froth of a whole pint bottle fly out.

"Be an obedient girl and please me.

"Your stern tutor,

"Edward the First."

He read this epistle twice over to satisfy himself that it was a warm
effusion, and not too tender; and it satisfied him. By a stretch of
imagination, he could feel that it represented him to her as in a higher
atmosphere, considerate for her, and not so intimate that she could deem
her spirit to be sharing it. Another dose of silence succeeded this
discreet administration of speech.

Dahlia replied with letter upon letter; blindly impassioned, and again
singularly cold; but with no reproaches. She was studying, she said. Her
head ached a little; only a little. She walked; she read poetry; she
begged him to pardon her for not drinking wine. She was glad that he
burnt her letters, which were so foolish that if she could have the
courage to look at them after they were written, they would never be
sent. He was slightly revolted by one exclamation: "How ambitious you
are!"

"Because I cannot sit down for life in a London lodging-house!" he
thought, and eyed her distantly as a poor good creature who had already
accepted her distinctive residence in another sphere than his. From such
a perception of her humanity, it was natural that his livelier sense of
it should diminish. He felt that he had awakened; and he shook her off.

And now he set to work to subdue Mrs. Lovell. His own subjugation was the
first fruit of his effort. It was quite unacknowledged by him: but when
two are at this game, the question arises--"Which can live without the
other?" and horrid pangs smote him to hear her telling musically of the
places she was journeying to, the men she would see, and the chances of
their meeting again before he was married to the heiress Adeline.

"I have yet to learn that I am engaged to her," he said. Mrs. Lovell gave
him a fixed look,--

"She has a half-brother."

He stepped away in a fury.

"Devil!" he muttered, absolutely muttered it, knowing that he fooled and
frowned like a stage-hero in stagey heroics. "You think to hound me into
this