the warm radiator.

The fresh clean hours of the dawn, when the mind is clear, and there is
neither sound nor movement to distract the thoughts, are favourable to
sane thinking.

Lydia reviewed the past few weeks in her life, and realised, for the
first time, the miracle which had happened. It was like a legend of
old--the slave had been lifted from the king's anteroom--the struggling
artist was now a rich woman. She twiddled the gold ring on her hand
absent-mindedly--and she was married ... and a widow! She had an
uncomfortable feeling that, in spite of her riches, she had not yet
found her niche. She was an odd quantity, as yet. The Cole-Mortimers and
the Briggerlands did not belong to her ideal world, and she could find
no place where she fitted.

She tried, in this state of mind so favourable to the consideration of
such a problem, to analyse Jack Glover's antagonism toward Jean
Briggerland and her father.

It seemed unnatural that a healthy young man should maintain so bitter a
feud with a girl whose beauty was almost of a transcendant quality and
all because she had rejected him.

Jack Glover was a public school boy, a man with a keen sense of honour.
She could not imagine him being guilty of a mean action. And such men
did not pursue vendettas without good reason. If they were rejected by a
woman, they accepted their _conge_ with a good grace, and it was almost
unthinkable that Jack should have no other reason for his hatred. Yet
she could not bring herself even to consider the possibility that the
reason was the one he had advanced. She came again to the dead end of
conjecture. She could believe in Jack's judgment up to a point--beyond
that she could not go.

She had her bath, dressed, and was in the garden when the eastern
horizon was golden with the light of the rising sun. Nobody was about,
the most energetic of the servants had not yet risen, and she strolled
through the avenue to the main road. As she stood there looking up and
down a man came out from the trees that fringed the road and began
walking rapidly in the direction of Monte Carlo.

"Mr. Jaggs!" she called.

He took no notice, but seemed to increase his limping pace, and after a
moment's hesitation, she went flying down the road after him. He turned
at the sound of her footsteps and in his furtive way drew into the
shadow of a bush. He looked more than usually grimy; on his hands were
an odd pair of gloves and a soft slouch hat that had