ndreds on their dress and on
their dinner. She was handsome, but she was middle-aged. She had few
friends of sufficient distinction to push her forward. And she was a
wise woman. She thought it better to live where she enjoyed a good deal
of popularity and consideration; where she could entertain in a modest
way, where her husband had been well known, and she could glow with the
reflected light that came to her from his shining abilities. These
reasons were patent to the world: she really made no secret of them. But
there was another reason, not quite so patent to the world, for her
living quietly in Russell Square, and this reason she kept strictly to
herself.

Mrs. Romaine had been a widow for three years. Her husband had been a
very learned man--Professor of numerous Oriental languages at University
College for some years, afterwards a Judge in Calcutta; and as he had
always lived in the West Central district during his Professorate, Mrs.
Romaine declared that she loved it and could live nowhere else. The
house in Russell Square was only partly hers. Her brother rented some of
the rooms (shared the house with her, as Mrs. Romaine vaguely phrased
it), and lightened the expense. But the two drawing-rooms, opening out
of one another, were entirely at Mrs. Romaine's disposal, and she was
generally to be found there between four and five o'clock in an
afternoon--a fact of which it is to be presumed that Mr. Brooke was
aware.

"So you have come back to town?" she said, rising to meet him, and
extending both hands with a pretty air of appropriative friendship.

"Yes; but I hardly expected to find you here so early."

Mrs. Romaine shrugged her shoulders a little.

"I found the country very dull," she said. "And you?"

"Oh, I went to Norway. I was well enough off. I rather enjoyed myself.
Perhaps I required a little bracing up for the task that lies before
me." He laughed as he spoke.

Mrs. Romaine paused for a moment in her task of pouring out the tea.

"You are resolved, then, to assume that responsibility?" she said, in a
low voice.

"My dear Rosalind! it's in the bond," answered Caspar Brooke, very
coolly.

He took the cup from her hand, stirred its contents, and proceeded to
drink them in a leisurely manner, glancing at his hostess meanwhile,
with a quiet smile.

Mrs. Romaine's dark eyes dropped before that glance. There was an
inscrutable look upon her face, but it was a look that would have told
another