take Time by the forelock and seek
safety in marriage.

Mark could understand now the significance of her behaviour during the
first few weeks of their acquaintance, and while this offer of herself
was in a manner distasteful, she looked so young, so seductive, so
ingenuous while she made it that he must needs blame her environment
rather than her disposition.

Bridget impressed him as a child masquerading in the garments of a
somewhat audacious woman of the world, and he told himself that if she
could be placed amidst more favourable surroundings, her natural
character would shine forth triumphantly. Moreover, he was by no means
free from egoism. He had enough vanity to experience some shadow of
gratification, and even though the other candidate was no one more
estimable than Colonel Faversham, there was, perhaps, a grain of
satisfaction in the knowledge that he might have been first in the
field.

As a matter of fact, Mark had never in his life been more attracted by
Carrissima than on this first day after his return to London. At the
same time he was a young man and Bridget was an extremely captivating
young woman. Notwithstanding a sense of disapproval, it became
judicious to take the precaution of saying "good-bye."

"Well, what am I to do?" asked Bridget, as he sat silent.

"I'm blessed if I know," he answered, and at once rose to his feet.

He saw that she was profoundly disappointed, and although it appeared
plain enough that the transaction would in any case be regarded by her
as mainly mercantile, he fancied that she would have been in other ways
delighted if his answer had been different.

"Neither do I," she said, with a sigh, "unless I make up my mind to
gratify Colonel Faversham. Why shouldn't I? Look upon this picture
and on this. A year or two at the outside, and on the one hand I find
myself without a penny. On the other, I have only to say the word and
I make certain, as soon as I please, of a fair income, a good house and
an excellent position in society; because, you know, I could hold my
own. You see me here living through a kind of interregnum. I am just
nobody! But in Paris and other places it used to be different, and so
I intend it to be again. What else is there? You make an immense
mistake if you imagine me as a governess or anything of that kind.
What could I teach?"

"Anyhow," answered Mark, holding out his hand, "you need not do
anything impetuously. At the worst yo