y sick of making a fool of herself."

"Indeed! Where is she now?"

"Back at Towers Cottage, moping, I suppose. That's Mr. Conolly the
inventor, there under Jasper."

"So I perceive. Clever head, rather! A plain, hard nature, with no
depths in it. Is that his wife, with the Swiss bonnet?"

"His wife! Why, that is a Swiss girl, the daughter of a guide at
Chamounix, who nursed Marian when she sprained her ankle. Mr. Conolly is
not married."

"I thought men of his stamp always married early."

"No. He is engaged, and engaged to a lady of very good position."

"He owes that to the diseased craving of modern women for notoriety of
any sort. What an admirable photograph of Marian! I never saw it before.
It is really most charming. When was it taken?"

"Last August, at Geneva. She does not like it--thinks it too
coquettish."

"Then perhaps she will give it to me."

"She will be only too glad, I daresay. You have caught her at a soft
moment to-night."

"I cannot find that duet anywhere," said Marian, entering. "What! up
already, Sholto? Where is papa?"

"I left him asleep in the dining-room. I have just been asking Miss
McQuinch whether she thought you would give me a copy of this carte."

"That Geneva one. It is most annoying how people persist in admiring it.
It always looks to me as if it belonged to an assortment of popular
beauties at one shilling each. I dont think I have another. But you may
take that if you wish."

"Thank you," said Douglas, drawing it from the book.

"I think you have a copy of every photograph I have had taken in my
life," she said, sitting down near him, and taking the album. "I have
several of yours, too. You must get one taken soon for me; I have not
got you with your beard yet. I have a little album upstairs which Aunt
Dora gave me on my eighth birthday; and the first picture in it is you,
dressed in flannels, holding a bat, and looking very stern as captain of
your eleven at Eton. I used to stand in great awe of you then. Do you
remember telling me once that 'Zanoni' was a splendid book, and that I
ought to read it?"

"Pshaw! No. I must have been a young fool. But it seems that I had the
grace even then to desire your sympathy."

"I assure you I read it most reverently down in Wiltshire, where Nelly
kept a select library of fiction concealed underneath her mattress; and
I believed every word of it. Nelly and I agreed that you were exactly
like Zanoni; but she was hardly to bl