arriage to-day or to-morrow. She
declined the offer, but, none the less, she felt flattered by the
attention.

Lord Hurdly's only further reference to their last conversation had
been to ask her to pay his words the respect of a few days'
consideration at least. He had learned from her that Horace was
unaware of her being in England, and that she had a whole week at her
disposal before he would expect to meet her there. When he asked for
a part of that week, in which to give him the opportunity to prove to
her that her duty to Horace, as well as to herself, demanded the
rupture of this mistaken engagement, she was sufficiently influenced
by the subtlety of this appeal to grant his request.

To her surprise, several days went by, and he did not come to see her
nor write. Every morning the carriage was sent to the hotel and the
footman came to her door for orders, but she always answered that she
did not require it. Every morning, also, came a lavish offering of
flowers, the great exotic flowers which Bettina loved--huge,
heavy-petalled roses and green translucent-looking orchids. But,
except for these, he did not thrust himself upon her notice--a fact
which during the first and second days she gave him the greatest
credit for, but by the third had grown to feel a certain resentment
at.

In the mean time there had followed her from home a letter from
Horace. It was the coldest she had ever had from him, and set her to
thinking deeply as to the possible cause of his coldness. Could it
be, she asked herself, that Lord Hurdly was right in calling him
capricious? Had he--as was possible, of course--cooled in his ardor
for her, and come to see that this hasty engagement of his had been a
great mistake, as she herself had come to see?

For this point, at least, Bettina had positively reached. Why,
therefore, should she adhere to her engagement in the face of the
knowledge that such an adherence would be to his disadvantage, no
less than to hers?

These arguments would have quite prevailed with her but for one
thing. This was the conviction, not yet changed, though somewhat
shaken by Lord Hurdly's account of him, that Horace really loved her
and would suffer in losing her.

Deprived of the restraint of her mother's influence, Bettina had
progressed with rapidity in her way toward worldliness and selfish
ambition, but she had a heart. Her love for her mother had given
abundant proof of that, if there were nothing else; a