ckly unbuttoning her
black gloves, she unsheathed her lovely hands, which were bare of
rings. Then with a few deft motions she removed her outer wrap and
her bonnet with its long, thick veil.

In so doing she revealed the fact that she had an exquisite head,
with delicious masses of brown hair which looked almost reddish in
its contrast to the dense black of her gown, the smooth severity of
which accentuated every lovely curve of her figure, as it would have
done every defect, had there been defect. This gown was fitted to her
so absolutely that one had the satisfying sense that one looked at
the woman instead of at her clothes. There were fine old portraits on
the wall, of noble ladies who had once done the honors of this great
establishment, but the fairest of them paled before the glowing
loveliness of this girl. For she looked a girl, despite her sombre
garments, and there was a certain timidity in her manner which
strengthened this impression.

Lord Hurdly offered her a seat, and then took another, facing her.

"In engaging yourself to marry Horace Spotswood," he began,
deliberately, "you have made the supreme, if not the irreparable,
mistake of your life."

Bettina's white skin showed the sudden ebb of the blood in her veins
as he said these words.

"Why?" she asked, concisely.

"Because he is no match for you, and because your marrying him would
not only place you on a lower plane than where you belong, but it
would also so seriously injure his position in life that there would
be no possible chance for him to retrieve it until my death. I am
comparatively a young man, and likely to live a long time. Apart from
that, I may marry. I had no expectation or intention of doing so, but
his recent defiance of me has made me sometimes feel inclined to the
idea. I have so far changed in my feeling on this subject that if I
could meet and win a woman to my mind, I would marry at once. What
then would become of Horace? He has a mere pittance besides his pay,
which is a ridiculous sum for a man to marry on. He has wronged you
in putting you in such a position, and you have equally wronged him."

Bettina had turned very white as he spoke. The picture he drew was
bad enough in itself, but to have it sketched before her in her
present surroundings made it infinitely worse.

"If we have wronged each other, we have done it ignorantly," she
said. "He assured me that you were determined never to marry, and he
counted on