f course very
unhappy. But I am going up to-morrow to see Mr. Radowitz, who has asked
for me. I shall stay with my aunt, Lady Langmoor, and nurse him as much
as they will let me. Oh, and I must try and comfort him! His poor
music!--it haunts me like something murdered. I could cry--and cry.

"Good night--and good-bye!

"CONSTANCE BLEDLOW."

The two notes fell at Falloden's feet. He stood looking out into
Beaumont Street. The long narrow street, which only two days before had
been alive with the stream of Commemoration, was quiet and deserted. A
heavy thunder rain was just beginning to plash upon the pavements; and
in the interval since he had taken the note from the maid's hand, it
seemed to Falloden that the night had fallen.

PART II

CHAPTER XI

"So, Connie, you don't want to go out with me this afternoon?" said Lady
Langmoor, bustling into the Eaton Square drawing-room, where Connie sat
writing a letter at a writing-table near the window, and occasionally
raising her eyes to scan the street outside.

"I'm afraid I can't, Aunt Sophia. You remember, I told you, Mr. Sorell
was coming to fetch me."

Lady Langmoor looked rather vague. She was busy putting on her white
gloves, and inspecting the fit of her grey satin dress, as she saw it in
the mirror over Connie's head.

"You mean--to see the young man who was hurt? Dreadfully sad of course,
and you know him well enough to go and see him in bed? Oh, well, of
course, girls do anything nowadays. It is very kind of you."

Connie laughed, but without irritation. During the week she had been
staying in the Langmoors' house, she had resigned herself to the fact
that her Aunt Langmoor--as it seemed to her--was a very odd and hardly
responsible creature, the motives of whose existence she did not even
begin to understand. But both her aunt and Lord Langmoor had been very
kind to their new-found niece. They had given a dinner-party and a
tea-party in her honour; they had taken her to several crushes a night,
and introduced her to a number of their own friends. And they would have
moved Heaven and earth to procure her an invitation to the Court ball
they themselves attended, on the day after Connie's arrival, if only,
as Lady Langmoor plaintively said--"Your poor mother had done the right
thing at the right time." By which she meant to express--without
harshness towards the memory of Lady Risborough--how lamentable it was
that, in addition to bei