ance to speak
to you of."

Her voice was certainly a charming one, and if her accent was such as
he might have found fault with under other circumstances, under these
he found it an added attraction. She had put her own construction on
Lord Hurdly's evident surprise at sight of her, and it was one which
gave her an increased self-possession and added to her sense of
power.

"Let us go into another room," said Lord Hurdly. "I cannot keep you
here, and whatever you may have to say to me I am quite at leisure to
attend to."

He led the way from the room, and Bettina followed in silence. She
had had innumerable dreams of grandeur, poor child! but she had been
too ignorant even to imagine such a place as this house. Its
furnishing and decorations represented not only the accumulated
wealth, but also the accumulated taste and opportunity, of many
successive generations. She felt an ineffable emotion of deep,
sensuous enjoyment in her present surroundings which made her heart
leap at the idea that all these things might some day be hers. Lord
Hurdly looked exceedingly well preserved, and that day might be very
far distant. All the more reason, therefore, she told herself, why
she should make peace between him and Horace, so that she might at
least be sometimes a guest in this house, and be lifted into an
atmosphere where she felt for the first time that she was in her true
element. It was not only the magnificence which she saw on every side
which so appealed to her. It was that air of the best in everything
that made her feel, in Lord Hurdly's presence, as well as in his
house, that civilization could not go further--that life, on its
material side, had nothing more to offer. And Bettina had now reached
a point in her experience where material pleasure seemed to be all
that was left. She quite believed that all of the joy of loving was
buried in the grave of her mother.

Her heart was beating fast as she entered Lord Hurdly's library and
saw him close the door behind them. It then struck her as being a
little peculiar that he should have brought her here without even
knowing who she was or what she wanted of him.

A doubt, a scarcely possible suspicion, came into her mind.

"Have you any idea who I am?" she said.

"It suffices me to know what you are."

"Ah! I do not understand," she said, puzzled.

"You have come upon me without ceremony, madam," said Lord Hurdly,
with a slightly old-fashioned pomposity in his p