s intended effect.

'No, Miss Power,' said Somerset gravely. 'But with a deeper sense of
woman's thoughtless trifling than time will ever eradicate.'

'Is not that a mistake?' she asked in a voice that distinctly trembled.

'A mistake? How?'

'I mean, do you not forget many things?' (throwing on him a troubled
glance). 'A woman may feel herself justified in her conduct, although it
admits of no explanation.'

'I don't contest the point for a moment.... Goodbye.'

'Good-bye.'

They parted amid the flowering shrubs and caged birds in the hall,
and he saw her no more. De Stancy came up, and spoke a few commonplace
words, his sister having gone out, either without perceiving Somerset,
or with intention to avoid him.

That night, as he had said, he was on his way to England.

VII.

The De Stancys and Powers remained in Heidelberg for some days. All
remarked that after Somerset's departure Paula was frequently irritable,
though at other times as serene as ever. Yet even when in a blithe and
saucy mood there was at bottom a tinge of melancholy. Something did not
lie easy in her undemonstrative heart, and all her friends excused the
inequalities of a humour whose source, though not positively known,
could be fairly well guessed.

De Stancy had long since discovered that his chance lay chiefly in
her recently acquired and fanciful predilection d'artiste for hoary
mediaeval families with ancestors in alabaster and primogenitive renown.
Seeing this he dwelt on those topics which brought out that aspect of
himself more clearly, talking feudalism and chivalry with a zest that
he had never hitherto shown. Yet it was not altogether factitious.
For, discovering how much this quondam Puritan was interested in the
attributes of long-chronicled houses, a reflected interest in himself
arose in his own soul, and he began to wonder why he had not prized
these things before. Till now disgusted by the failure of his family to
hold its own in the turmoil between ancient and modern, he had grown to
undervalue its past prestige; and it was with corrective ardour that he
adopted while he ministered to her views.

Henceforward the wooing of De Stancy took the form of an intermittent
address, the incidents of their travel furnishing pegs whereon to hang
his subject; sometimes hindering it, but seldom failing to produce in
her a greater tolerance of his presence. His next opportunity was the
day after Somerset's departure from Heid