arles say anything about coming to see
him this afternoon?"

As she asked the question Henrietta ran her eye down over the
announcements in the Court Circular. Marshall replied in the negative.
She made no comment, hardly appearing to notice his answer. But, as
she stepped lightly and delicately away down the airy corridor to the
door of the sick-room, over her blue gauze draped shoulder she flung
back at him--

"This confinement to the house is getting quite on my nerves. I must
really allow myself a little holiday.--Take a drive to-morrow if Frederic
is no worse. I will call at the Grand Hotel, I think, and see darling
Damaris, just for a few minutes, myself."

Information which went far to restore her hearer's equanimity. His
affairs, as he recognized, were in actively astute safe-keeping.

Marshall Wace spent the rest of the morning in the drawing-room of the
villa, at the piano, composing a by no means despicable setting of
Shelley's two marvellous stanzas, which commence:

"Rarely, rarely comest thou,
Spirit of Delight!
Wherefore hast thou left me now
Many a day and night?"

The rich baritone voice, vibrant with apparent passion, swept out
through the open windows, across the glittering garden. Miss Maud
Callowgas, walking along that portion of the esplanade immediately in
front of the hotel, paused in the grilling sunshine to listen. Heaven
upon earth seemed to open before her pale, white-lashed eyes. If she
could only ascertain what fortune she might eventually count on
possessing--but Mama was so dreadfully close about everything to do with
money! The Harchester bishopric was a fat one, worth from ten to fifteen
thousand a year. That she knew from the odious, impudent questions asked
about it by some horrible nonconformist member, in the House of Commons,
just after her father's death. Surely Mama must have saved a
considerable amount out of so princely an income? She had always kept
down expenses at the Palace. The servants left so often because they
declared they had not enough to eat.

Then through the open window of the villa embowered in roses, there amid
the palms and pines--and in a falling cadence too:

"How shall ever one like me
Win thee back again?"

But Maud Callowgas needed no winning, being very effectually won already,
so it was superfluous thus movingly to ask the question. The mid-day sun
striking through her black-and-white parasol made her feel dizzy and
faint.--If only sh