must be one of these, but was
it not to be her lot to see him in his true light--in his true self?
Then the meeting of that other day gave her a keen pang. She did not
like the idea of the Dictator coming to her to make love by deputy for
another man. It was not like him, she thought, to undertake a task such
as that. It was done, of course, out of kindness and affection for Mr.
Hamilton--and that was, in its way, a noble and a generous act--but
still, it jarred upon her feelings. The truth was that it jarred upon
her feelings because it showed her, as she thought, how little serious
consideration of her was in the Dictator's mind, and how sincere and
genuine had been his words when he told her again and again that to him
she seemed little more than a child. It was not that feeling which had
brought up the wish that she could see the Dictator prove himself
a man born to dictate. But that wish, or that doubt, or that
questioning--whatever it might be--which was already in her mind was
stirred to painful activity now by the consciousness which she strove to
exclude, and could not help admitting, that she, after all, was nothing
to the Dictator.

That night, like most nights when she did not herself entertain, Helena
went with her father to a dinner party. She showed herself to be in
radiant spirits the moment she entered the room. She was dressed
bewitchingly, and everyone said she was looking more charming than ever.
The fashion of lighting drawing-rooms and dining-rooms gives ample
opportunity for a harmless deception in these days, and the blue
half-circles were not seen round Helena's eyes, nor would any of the
company in the drawing-room have guessed that the heart under that
silken bodice was bleeding.

CHAPTER XII

DOLORES

Mr. Paulo was perplexed. And as Mr. Paulo was a cool-headed,
clear-sighted man, perplexity was an unusual thing with him, and it
annoyed him. The cause of his perplexity was connected almost entirely
with the ex-Dictator of Gloria. Ericson had still kept his rooms in the
hotel; he had said, and Hamilton agreed with him, that in remaining
there they seemed more like birds of passage, more determined to regard
return to Gloria as not merely a possible but a probable event, and an
event in the near future. To take a house in London, the Dictator
thought, and, of course, Hamilton thought with him, would be to admit
the possibility of a lengthy sojourn in London, and that was a
possibil