y, and left the court without a stain upon
her character. She certainly had never given him the very least
encouragement. At the risk of rudeness she _must_ check these
attentions in their beginning. Short of actual discourtesy, she must
show him that this warm interest in her doings, these sympathetic
glances, were exceedingly distasteful. She never would look near him
again, she would keep her eyes rigorously cast down whenever he was
present, and as she made this prudent resolution she quite
unintentionally looked up, and found his patient gaze again fixed upon
her.

"Oh, you are too severe, Miss Joliffe," the architect said; "we should
all be delighted to see a title come to Miss Anastasia, and," he added
softly, "I am sure no one would become it better."

He longed to drop the formal prefix of Miss, and to speak of her simply
as Anastasia. A few months before he would have done so naturally and
without reflection, but there was something in the girl's manner which
led him more recently to forego this pleasure.

Then the potential peeress got up and left the room.

"I am just going to look after the bread," she said; "I think it ought
to be baked by this time."

Miss Joliffe's scruples were at last overborne, and Westray retained the
papers, partly because it was represented to her that if he did not
examine them it would be a flagrant neglect of the wishes of a dead
man--wishes that are held sacred above all others in the circles to
which Miss Joliffe belonged--and partly because possession is nine
points of the law, and the architect already had them safe under lock
and key in his own room. But he was not able to devote any immediate
attention to them, for a crisis in his life was approaching, which
tended for the present to engross his thoughts.

He had entertained for some time an attachment to Anastasia Joliffe.
When he originally became aware of this feeling he battled vigorously
against it, and his efforts were at first attended with some success.
He was profoundly conscious that any connection with the Joliffes would
be derogatory to his dignity; he feared that the discrepancy between
their relative positions was sufficiently marked to attract attention,
if not to provoke hostile criticism. People would certainly say that an
architect was marrying strangely below him, in choosing a landlady's
niece. If he were to do such a thing, he would no doubt be throwing
himself away socially. His father