he hesitated glanced at the mirror.
"He may come in," she said at last; and waited for him not so much
smoothing her hair as girding her spirit.

Caspar Goodwood was accordingly the next moment shaking hands with her,
but saying nothing till the servant had left the room. "Why didn't you
answer my letter?" he then asked in a quick, full, slightly peremptory
tone--the tone of a man whose questions were habitually pointed and who
was capable of much insistence.

She answered by a ready question, "How did you know I was here?"

"Miss Stackpole let me know," said Caspar Goodwood. "She told me you
would probably be at home alone this evening and would be willing to see
me."

"Where did she see you--to tell you that?"

"She didn't see me; she wrote to me."

Isabel was silent; neither had sat down; they stood there with an air
of defiance, or at least of contention. "Henrietta never told me she was
writing to you," she said at last. "This is not kind of her."

"Is it so disagreeable to you to see me?" asked the young man.

"I didn't expect it. I don't like such surprises."

"But you knew I was in town; it was natural we should meet."

"Do you call this meeting? I hoped I shouldn't see you. In so big a
place as London it seemed very possible."

"It was apparently repugnant to you even to write to me," her visitor
went on.

Isabel made no reply; the sense of Henrietta Stackpole's treachery,
as she momentarily qualified it, was strong within her. "Henrietta's
certainly not a model of all the delicacies!" she exclaimed with
bitterness. "It was a great liberty to take."

"I suppose I'm not a model either--of those virtues or of any others.
The fault's mine as much as hers."

As Isabel looked at him it seemed to her that his jaw had never been
more square. This might have displeased her, but she took a different
turn. "No, it's not your fault so much as hers. What you've done was
inevitable, I suppose, for you."

"It was indeed!" cried Caspar Goodwood with a voluntary laugh.

"And now that I've come, at any rate, mayn't I stay?"

"You may sit down, certainly."

She went back to her chair again, while her visitor took the first place
that offered, in the manner of a man accustomed to pay little thought to
that sort of furtherance. "I've been hoping every day for an answer to
my letter. You might have written me a few lines."

"It wasn't the trouble of writing that prevented me; I could as easily
have written y