lf-justification. 'Beatrice now would suffer no less than she has
done.'

'Then tell me one thing more,' Wilfrid pursued. 'What has become of that
man Dagworthy?'

'That I can easily do. Long ago he married a young lady of Dunfield.'

'Then what did it mean? what _did_ it mean?'

Mrs. Baxendale merely shook her head.

A few months later, Beatrice astonished everyone by her first appearance
as a public singer. Wilfrid had as little anticipated such a step as any
other of Beatrice's friends. What was about to happen only became known
a day or two in advance. Mrs. Ashley Birks was paralysed with horror;
she implored, she reasoned, she put on her face of cold anger. Mr. Athel
cried 'What the deuce!' and forthwith held a serious colloquy with his
son. Wilfrid experienced a certain joy, only tempered with anxiety as to
the result of the experiment. If it proved a success, he felt that the
effect upon himself would be to draw him nearer to Beatrice; but it must
be a great success. He calculated on imaginative influences as other men
do on practical issues. Beatrice, acknowledged as more than an amateur,
perchance publicly recognised as really a great singer, would impress
him in a new way; he might overcome his impartial way of regarding her.
The result, outwardly, answered his fullest hopes. Beatrice had not idly
risked what would have been a deplorable fiasco; she had the
encouragement of those who did not speak in vain, and her ambition had
fired itself as she perceived the results of her conscientious labour.
Her nervousness throughout the day of the concert was terrible, but
little less than her life depended on the result, and at the hour of
trial she was strong to conquer. Very far behind her, as she stepped out
to that large audience, were the dilettante successes of drawing-room
and charitable concerts; she smiled at all that flow; since then she had
unlearnt so much and wrought with such humility. But what she strove for
was won; she knew it in the grasp of Wilfrid's hand when he led her to
her carriage. Her veil was down; behind it she was sobbing.

'Am I nothing more than a frivolous woman now?' she said, leaning to him
from the carriage.

Wilfrid could make no answer, and she was whirled away from him.

He went to her the next day, and asked her to be his wife. Beatrice
looked him in the face long and steadily. Then she asked:

'Do you love me, Wilfrid?'

'I love you.'

Another word trembled on her to