etchedly. His voice
was actually sad, and she had never heard it sad in all their
intercourse before. She had never thought it could be sad, and the sound
was something like a revelation of the man. It made her afraid of
herself--afraid for herself. And yet above all this arose a thrill of
happiness which was almost wild. He was near her again! he had not gone
away, he would not go away yet. Yet! there was a girl's foolish, loving
comfort in the word! It seemed so impossible that she could lose him
forever, that for the brief moment she forgot Priscilla Gower and
justice altogether. In three months the whole world had altered its face
to her vision. She had altered herself; her life had altered she knew,
but she did not know that she had been happier in her ignorance of her
own heart than she could be now in her knowledge of it.

Her little court were not very successful to-night. Denis Oglethorpe
kept his place at her side with a persistence which baffled the boldest
of her admirers, and she was too happy to remember the rest of the
world. It was not very polite, perhaps, and certainly it was not very
wise to forget everything but that she herself was not forgotten; but
she forgot everything else--this pretty Theo, this handsome and
impolitic Theo. She did not care for her court, though she was
sweet-temperedly grateful to her courtiers for their homage. She did
care for Denis Oglethorpe. Ah, poor Priscilla! He went home with them to
their hotel. He stayed, too, to eat of the _petite souper_ Lady
Throckmorton had ordered. Her ladyship had a great deal to say to him,
and a great number of questions to ask, so he sat with them for an hour
or so accounting for himself and replying to numberless queries, all the
time very conscious of Theo, who sat by the fire in a mist of white
drapery and soft, thick, white wraps, the light from the wax tapers
flickering in Pamela's twinkling sapphires, and burning in the great
crimson-hearted rose fastened in the puffs of her hair.

But Lady Throckmorton remembered at last that she had to give some
orders to her maid, and so for a moment they were left together.

Then he went to the white figure at the fire and stood before it, losing
something of both color and calmness. He was going to be guilty of a
weakness, and knowing it, could not control himself. He was not so great
a hero as she had fancied him, after all. But it would have been very
heroic to have withstood a temptation so s