ame there in
ineffaceable letters. She could not bear the thought of parting from
him, and felt, or thought she felt, that her happiness was already too
deeply pledged to allow her to throw up the cards without an effort.

Fortune favours the brave. Perhaps, after all, it would declare itself
for her. She was modest in her aspirations. She did not expect that he
would ever give her the love he bore this other woman; she only asked
to live in the sunlight of his presence, and would be glad to take him
at his own price, or indeed at any price. Man, she knew, is by nature
as unstable as water, and will mostly melt beneath the eyes of more
women than one, as readily as ice before a fire when the sun has hid
his face. Yes, she would play the game out: she would not throw away
her life's happiness without an effort. After all, matters might have
been worse: he might have been actually married.

But she knew that her hand was a difficult one to lead from, though
she also knew that she held the great trumps--unusual beauty,
practically unlimited wealth, and considerable fascination of manner.
Her part must be to attract without repelling, charm without alarming,
fascinate by slow degrees, till at length he was involved in a net
from which there was no escape, and, above all, never to allow him to
suspect her motives till the ripe moment came. It was a hard task for
a proud woman to set herself, and, in a manner, she was proud; but,
alas, with the best of us, when love comes in at the door, pride,
reason, and sometimes honour, fly out the window.

And so Miss Terry heard no more talk of the Isle of Wight.

Thenceforward, under the frank and open guise of friendship, Mildred
contrived to keep Arthur continually at her side. She did more. She
drew from him all the history of his engagement to Angela, and
listened, with words of sympathy on her lips, and wrath and bitter
jealousy in her heart, to his enraptured descriptions of her rival's
beauty and perfections. So benighted was he, indeed, that once he went
so far as to suggest that he should, when he and Angela were married,
come to Madeira to spend their honeymoon, and dilated on the pleasant
trips which they three might take together.

"Truly," thought Mildred to herself, "that would be delightful." Once,
too, he even showed her a tress of Angela's hair, and, strange to say,
she found that there still lingered in her bosom a sufficient measure
of vulgar first principles to