ss, and though her favourite dress lay ready for
her, she knew he would not of his own impulse bestow a second glance
upon her.

The evening had come and passed. As by some enchantment Wyndham had
appeared, was seated at the same table with herself, engaged in intimate
conversation with the family, left alone to wine and cigars with her
father; rejoining them in the drawing-room, listening to her playing,
singing to her accompaniment! Then, lo, he was gone; and she was left to
ponder on the swift, surprising turn of events. After all these years of
emotion, the acquaintanceship was an accomplished fact. She was to
penetrate within his door at last, to become, for the time being, part
of the very business of his life!

She retired that night still with the sense of miracle; yet infinitely
grateful to her father for his charming concession to her whim. And her
first subtle move had been crowned with success! At least there was work
where work was needed so sorely; work, too, that brought her so near to
him, annihilating a distance she had reconciled herself to think of as
impassable, and opening up potentialities of service which her fertile
wits would not be slow to seize upon. Would it not be a joy to help him
to a firm footing again, to raise this gifted life of which she had
watched the long slow sinking! It was miraculous that this privilege
should fall to her! But everything must appear to flow naturally to him
of itself; he should never suspect that the unseen hand at work was
hers, any more than he should ever know that this was what she, who
loved him, had for years worked out in fancy.

And she!--she should have no thought but the unselfish desire of serving
him! What matter if she carried in her heart the cold conviction that he
could never love her--since all she had dared aspire to had fallen to
her lot! For who was she to cherish vain hopes? She had not the
commonest touch of beauty; she was hopelessly out of his sphere. She
felt herself appallingly ignorant and inexperienced. In her easy shelter
the years had slipped by in monotonous quiet. In the world outside there
beat a life that was strenuous, entrancing, dramatic--the struggle of
the realm of affairs, the pomp and colour of courts and society, the
important events of politics, the field of view that opened in the
novels, or lay spread behind the footlights of the theatres. Wyndham
belonged to all this brilliant universe, had walked with firm tread a