not
matter, she was occupied with happy thoughts. Now all this, everything
she looked at and everything she happened to touch, was hers. Everything
was hers from the silver urn down to the very salt spoons. The cup that
Lady Dashwood was just raising to her lips was hers, Gwendolen's.

And now as she walked along Broad Street, after leaving Mrs. Potten, how
gay the world seemed--how brilliant! Even the leaden grey sky was
joyful! To Gwendolen there was no war, no sorrow, no pain! There was no
world beyond, no complexity of moral forces, no great piteous struggle
for an ideal, no "Christ that is to be!" She was engaged and was going
shopping!

It was, however, a pity that she had only ten shillings. That would not
get a really good umbrella. Oh, look at those perfectly ducky gloves in
the window they were only eight and elevenpence!

Gwendolen stared at the window. Stopping to look at shop windows had
been strictly forbidden by her mother, but her dear mother was not
there! So Gwendolen peered in intently. What about getting those gloves
instead of the umbrella?

She marched into the shop, rather bewildered with her own thoughts. The
gloves were shown her by the same woman who had served Lady Dashwood a
day or two ago, and who recognised her and smiled respectfully. The
gloves were sweet; the gauntlets were exactly what she preferred to any
others. And the colour was right. Gwendolen was fingering her purse when
the shopwoman said--

"Do you want to pay for them, or shall I enter them, miss?"

Gwendolen's brain worked. She was now definitely engaged, and in a few
weeks no doubt would be Mrs. Middleton; after that a bill of eight and
elevenpence would be a trifle.

"Enter them, please," said Gwendolen, and she surprised herself by
hearing her own voice asking for the umbrella department.

After this, problems that had in the past appeared insoluble, arranged
themselves without any straining effort on her part; they just
straightened themselves out and went "right there."

She looked at a plain umbrella for nine and sixpence, and then examined
one at fifteen and eleven. Thereupon she was shown another at
twenty-five shillings, which was more respectable looking and had a nice
top. It was clearly her duty to choose this, anything poorer would lower
the dignity of the future Mrs. Middleton. Gwendolen was learning the
"duties" she owed to the station in life to which God had called her.
She found no sort of difficu