" she asked.

"About the same as usual."

"Any that you particularly noticed?" she went on. "I mean, among the
ladies."

He laughed uneasily. "You forget how interested I am in the pictures,"
he said.

There was a pause. She looked up at him--and suddenly looked away again.
But he saw it plainly: there were tears in her eyes.

"Do you mind turning down the gas?" she said. "My eyes have been weak
all day."

He complied with her request--the more readily, having his own reasons
for being glad to escape the glaring scrutiny of the light.

"I think I will rest a little on the sofa," she resumed. In the position
which he occupied, his back would have been now turned on her. She
stopped him when he tried to move his chair. "I would rather not look at
you, Ernest," she said, "when you have lost confidence in me."

Not the words, but the tone, touched all that was generous and noble in
his nature. He left his place, and knelt beside her--and opened to her
his whole heart.

"Am I not unworthy of you?" he asked, when it was over.

She pressed his hand in silence.

"I should be the most ungrateful wretch living," he said, "if I did
not think of you, and you only, now that my confession is made. We will
leave Munich to-morrow--and, if resolution can help me, I will only
remember the sweetest woman my eyes ever looked on as the creature of a
dream."

She hid her face on his breast, and reminded him of that letter of her
writing, which had decided the course of their lives.

"When I thought you might meet the happy woman in my life-time, I said
to you, 'Tell me of it--and I promise to tell _her_ that she has only
to wait.' Time must pass, Ernest, before it can be needful to perform
my promise. But you might let me see her. If you find her in the gallery
to-morrow, you might bring her here."

Mrs. Lismore's request met with no refusal. Ernest was only at a loss to
know how to grant it.

"You tell me she is a copyist of pictures," his wife reminded him. "She
will be interested in hearing of the portfolio of drawings by the great
French artists which I bought for you in Paris. Ask her to come and see
them, and to tell you if she can make some copies. And say, if you like,
that I shall be glad to become acquainted with her."

He felt her breath beating fast on his bosom. In the fear that she
might lose all control over herself, he tried to relieve her by speaking
lightly. "What an invention yours is!" he said. "If my