he had bowed to Ingram, with a face
flushed with shame and pain and with eyes cast down. Ingram, too, was
passing on, without even shaking hands with her or uttering a word.
Mosenberg was too bewildered to attempt any protest: he merely
followed Sheila, with a conviction that something desperate had
occurred, and that he would best consult her feelings by making no
reference to it.

But that one look that the girl had directed to her old friend before
she bowed and passed on had filled him with dismay and despair. It
was somehow like the piteous look of a wounded animal, incapable
of expressing its pain. All thoughts and fancies of his own little
vexations or embarrassments were instantly banished from him: he could
only see before him those sad and piteous eyes, full of kindness
to him, he thought, and of grief that she should be debarred from
speaking to him, and of resignation to her own lot.

Gwdyr House did not get much work out of him that day. He sat in a
small room in a back part of the building, looking out on a lonely
little square, silent and ruddy with the reflected light of the
sunset.

"A hundred Mrs. Kavanaghs," he was thinking to himself bitterly
enough, "will not save my poor Sheila. She will die of a broken heart.
I can see it in her face. And it is I who have done it--from first to
last it is I who have done it; and now I can do nothing to help her."

That became the burden and refrain of all his reflections. It was he
who had done this frightful thing. It was he who had taken away the
young Highland girl, his good Sheila, from her home, and ruined her
life and broken her heart. And he could do nothing to help her!

CHAPTER XVIII.

SHEILA'S STRATAGEM.

"We met Mr. Ingram to-day," said young Mosenberg ingenuously.

He was dining with Lavender, not at home, but at a club in St. James's
street; and either his curiosity was too great, or he had forgotten
altogether Ingram's warnings to him that he should hold his tongue.

"Oh, did you?" said Lavender, showing no great interest. "Waiter, some
French mustard. What did Ingram say to you?"

The question was asked with much apparent indifference, and the
boy stared. "Well," he said at length, "I suppose there is some
misunderstanding between Mrs. Lavender and Mr. Ingram, for they both
saw each other, and they both passed on without speaking: I was very
sorry--yes. I thought they were friends--I thought Mr. Ingram knew
Mrs. Lavender even