adiance which I cannot attempt to describe. This nimbus
of delicate sweetness, this irradiation of her person by her
personality it was, which made Cynthia Lane lovely, as no other woman
I have met has been.

I must have stolen fully half an hour of her time that day, to the
annoyance it may be of many other people. And it was not until she was
being in a sense almost forcibly drawn away from me by the claims of
others that I learned, from the manner in which she was addressed by
Lady Barthrop, that she, Cynthia Lane, of whom I had thought only as
one of Lane's five sisters, as one among my own fellow guests, was
indeed the guest of the occasion, and the betrothed of Lady Barthrop's
younger son.

Other things happened, no doubt. I was presently introduced to young
Barthrop, the bridegroom to be; and, mechanically, I endeavoured to
comport myself fittingly as a guest. But, for me, the entertainment
ended with my separation from Cynthia.

'Do please stop being a recluse, and call while I am here,' she had
said as she was being drawn away from me into a sort of maelstrom of
gaily coloured dresses, and laughing, compliment-paying men. And I
blessed her for that.

III

Charles Augustus Everard Barthrop, third son of the baronet and his
wife, was the assistant manager of some financial company in London,
of which his father was a director. I fancy the young man himself was
also a director, but am not sure as to that. In any case he had the
reputation of being one who was likely to achieve big things in the
world of finance and company promotion, a world of which I was as
profoundly ignorant as though a dweller in the planet Mars. In another
field, too, this young man had won early distinction. He was a mighty
footballer, and a rather notable boxer. He was very blonde, very
handsome, very large, and, I gathered, of a very merry and kindly
disposition. He looked it. His sunny face and bright blue eyes
contained no more evidence of care or anxiety than one sees in the
face of a healthy boy of twelve.

'Here is a man,' I thought, 'peculiarly rich in everything that I
lack; and all his life long he has been equally rich in his possession
of everything I have lacked. And now he is going to marry Cynthia
Lane. The rest seems natural enough, but not this.'

As yet I had little enough of evidence on which to base conclusions.
But, as I saw it, Charles Barthrop was a handsome and materially
well-endowed young animal, whos