ng ended, with such affinity of
tastes, their feet were fairly set in the rosy path of friendship.

Now that is how it all began, and that explains what happened
afterwards when the right time came.

Chance, forsooth! We know better.

IV

Not long after that dinner, Lady Elspeth Gordon came up to town for
the first time after her husband's death.

She had been John Graeme's mother's closest friend, and when he was
left alone in the world, the dear old lady, before she had fully
recovered from her own sore loss, took upon herself a friendly
supervision of him and his small affairs, and their intercourse was
very delightful.

For Lady Elspeth knew everybody worth knowing, and all that was to be
known about the rest; and those gentle brown eyes of hers had missed
little of what had gone on around her since she first came to London,
fifty years before. She had known Wellington, and Palmerston, and John
Russell, and Disraeli, and Gladstone, and Louis Napoleon, and
Garibaldi, and many more. She was a veritable golden link with the
past, and a storehouse of reminiscence and delightful insight into
human nature.

And--since she knew everyone worth knowing, Graeme very soon
discovered that she knew Margaret Brandt, and Miss Brandt's very
frequent visits to Phillimore Gardens proved that she was an
acceptable visitor there.

Upon that, his own visits to Lady Elspeth naturally became still more
frequent than before,--approximating even, as she had said, the record
of the milkman,--and, though his dear old friend might rate him gently
as to the motives for his coming, he had every reason to believe that
her sympathies were with him, and that she would do what she could to
further his hopes.

He had never, however, openly discussed Margaret with her until that
afternoon of which I have already spoken.

Miss Brandt, you see, was always most graciously kind and charming
whenever they met. But that was just her natural self. She was
charming and gracious to everyone--even to Charles Pixley, the while
he swamped her with inane tittle-tattle, and higher proof of grace
than that it would be difficult to imagine.

And, since she was charming to all, Graeme felt that he could base no
solid hopes on her gracious treatment of himself, though the quiet
recollection of every smallest detail of it would set him all aglow
with hope for days after each chance meeting. And so he had never
ventured to discuss the matter with Lady E