ion was past, asking the housekeeper to take her somewhere
to rearrange her hair and prepare herself for luncheon.

Even had Bettina been the possessor of a happy heart which rejoiced
in a fulfilled and contented love for the man she had promised to
marry, the other, dominating side of her nature could not have been
quite stifled as she walked through the halls and corridors of this
magnificent mansion. These were things her imagination had always
pictured as her proper position in life, and which the unregenerate
heart within her had always craved. But how far beyond her ignorant
dreams was the grand repose of this beautiful house! It was so much
more than she had conceived that the new supply to her senses seemed,
in a way, to create a new demand in them.

Never, perhaps, had she so appreciated what it must be to be a
_grande dame_ as to-day, when she was on the point of refusing such
an opportunity, though it was just within her grasp. For she had no
idea but that she should refuse it, and this very consciousness made
her more friendly in her feelings and actions toward Lord Hurdly than
she would otherwise have been.

When she had adjusted her dress and smoothed her hair, before large
mirrors which gave her a better view of her loveliness than she had
ever had before, a servant summoned her to luncheon, and at the foot
of the stairs she saw Lord Hurdly awaiting her.

So seen, a decided baldness, which she had not much noticed before,
became evident, but there was a certain distinction in the man's
general air which this rather seemed to heighten. His manner of
delicate solicitude for her was the perfection of good-breeding, and
when she answered him reassuringly, and walked by his side to the
dining-room, a sudden conviction seized her that she had come into
her own--that this was the position for which she had been born, and
that, independent of the fact that she had determined to decline it,
it was her fate, which she could not escape. She tried to coax the
belief that it was as Horace's wife that she would one day enjoy all
these delights, but the thought eluded her. She could not see Horace
in the seat now filled by his cousin. In imagination as well as in
reality it was Lord Hurdly who occupied that seat.

This conviction, which every moment deepened, she could not shake off
and could not account for. She had a feeling that it was forced upon
her consciousness through some dominating power of Lord Hurdly's