e," she said. "You cannot play with love
like that. It is playing heads and tails with a man's life, or worse.
You are playing with his very soul."

"And a month afterwards it will be he who will be playing with another
woman's soul," said Jeannie quietly. "You cannot call it love with that
sort of man. How many times has he been in love, and what has happened
to it all? I am only making myself the chance woman with whom he happens
to think himself in love at the time when he proposes to settle down and
marry. He shall propose marriage, therefore, to me."

Lady Nottingham's air of comfort had quite left her. Her plump,
contented face was puckered into unusual wrinkles.

"No, no, no," she said. "I can't imagine you act like that, Jeannie.
It isn't you."

Jeannie's eyes grew suddenly sombre.

"Oh, my dear, it is me," she said, "though I am glad it is a me which
is a stranger to you. I hope, as a rule, I don't play pitch-and-toss
with other men's souls; but there are circumstances--and those have
now arisen--in which I see no other way. At all costs to him I will
fulfil my promise to Diana. I will do my best that Daisy shall never
know. I do not care what it costs him. And yet that is not quite
true. I do care, because I like him. But I cannot measure his
possible suffering against Daisy's. It is through him that the need
of doing this has come. He has got to suffer for it; and I assure you
it isn't he alone who pays, it is I also."

Jeannie rose.

"And I do not yet know if I shall succeed," she said. "He may look with
a scornful wonder on my--my somewhat mature charms. He may--though I do
not really expect it--still intend to settle down and marry--Daisy. She
will accept him, if he does--I have seen enough to know that--and we
shall then have to tell her. But I hope that may not happen."

She took up her candle.

"I must go to bed," she said, "for I am dog-tired. But I don't feel so
fretted now I have told you. I wish I did not like him. I should not
care if I did not. Good-night, dear Alice."

* * * * *

All next day until evening Jeannie continued these tactics. Genial,
eager, sympathetic with others, she treated Lord Lindfield, whenever it
was necessary to speak to him at all, with the unsmiling civility which
a well-bred woman accords to a man she scarcely knows, and does not wish
to know better. And all day she saw the growing effect of her policy,
for all day he grew more