through tears. Her mouth, uneven in its line, had a scarlet eloquence
more pleasing than sculpturesque severity. At the moment, she wore no
gloves, and her tapering fingers shared their characteristic with her
nose, which also tapered, with exquisite lightness of mould, into a
point. For colour, she had a gypsy's red and brown. The string of gold
beads which she fastened habitually round her throat showed well against
the warm tints in her cheek; her long pearl earrings caught in certain
lights the dark shadow of her hair--hair black, abundant, and
elaborately dressed in the fashion of that time. Passionate yet
calculating, imperious yet susceptible of control, generous yet given to
suspicion, an egoist yet capable of self-abandoning enthusiasm--she
represented a type of feminine character often recognised but rarely
understood.

On this particular afternoon in October she had some pressing matters on
her mind. She was considering, among other things, an offer of marriage
which she had received by post two days before from a nobleman of great
fortune, the Duke of Marshire. But Sara was ambitious--not mercenary.
She wanted power. Power, unhappily, was the last thing one could
associate with the estimable personality of the suitor under
deliberation.

"I must tell papa," she said to herself, "that it would never do."

Here she fell into a reverie; but as her expression changed from one of
annoyance to something of wistfulness and sentimentality, the question
of marriage with the Duke of Marshire had clearly been dismissed for
that moment from her heart. At intervals a shy smile gave an almost
childish tenderness to her face. Then, on a sudden, her eyelashes would
droop, she would start with a sigh, and, apparently caught by some
unwelcome remembrance, sink into a humour as melancholy as it was
mysterious. Quiet she sat, absorbed in her own emotions, heedless alike
of the streets through which she was passing and the many acquaintances
who bowed as she drove by. It was her daily custom, when in town, to
call at the Carlton Club for her father and take him for a short drive
round the Park before his tea. To-day he was already waiting on the club
steps as the brougham halted before the entrance. He smiled, joined Lady
Sara at once, and seating himself by her side in his usual corner,
maintained his usual imperturbable reserve. As a rule, during these
excursions he would either doze, or jot down ideas in his note-book, or