w nothing of it,' said Dacier, but promised to come and dine.
Alone in her happiness Constance Asper despatched various brief notes
under her gold-symbolled crest to sisterly friends; one to Lady Wathin,
containing the single line:

'Your prophesy is confirmed.'

Dacier was comfortably able to face his Club after the excitement of
a proposal, with a bride on his hands. He was assaulted concerning the
article, and he parried capitally. Say that her lips were rather cold:
at any rate, they invigorated him. Her character was guaranteed--not the
hazy idea of a dupe. And her fortune would be enormous: a speculation
merely due to worldly prudence and prospective ambition.

At the dinner-table of four, in the evening, conversation would have
seemed dull to him, by contrast, had it not, been for the presiding
grace of his bride, whose habitually eminent feminine air of superiority
to the repast was throned by her appreciative receptiveness of his looks
and utterances. Before leaving her, he won her consent to a very early
marriage; on the plea of a possibly approaching Session, and also
that they had waited long. The consent, notwithstanding the hurry of
preparations, it involved, besides the annihilation of her desire
to meditate on so solemn a change in her life and savour the
congratulations of her friends and have the choir of St. Catherine's
rigorously drilled in her favourite anthems was beautifully yielded to
the pressure of circumstances.

There lay on his table at night a letter; a bulky letter. No need to
tear it open for sight of the signature: the superscription was redolent
of that betraying woman. He tossed it unopened into the fire.

As it was thick, it burned sullenly, discolouring his name on the
address, as she had done, and still offering him a last chance of
viewing the contents. She fought on the consuming fire to have her
exculpation heard.

But was she not a shameless traitor? She had caught him by his love of
his country and hope to serve it. She had wound into his heart to bleed
him of all he knew and sell the secrets for money. A wonderful sort of
eloquence lay there, on those coals, no doubt. He felt a slight movement
of curiosity to glance at two or three random sentences: very slight.
And why read them now? They were valueless to him, mere outcries. He
judged her by the brute facts. She and her slowly-consuming letter were
of a common blackness. Moreover, to read them when he was plighted to