the door, and opened it. She listened, and heard Hugh's
footsteps in the hall. He picked up his umbrella, and unfolded it to be
ready for the rain. The _frou-frou_ of the silk seemed to stir her to
action.

"Hugh!" she cried in a broken voice.

He turned in the hall, and looked up.

"Come back," she said.

He came up the stairs three steps at a time.

"Hugh," she said, leaning heavily on the balustrade, and looking away,
"I have a secret to tell you. I have tried to be wicked to-day, but
somehow I can't. Listen to the truth."

"I need not," he answered. "I know it already."

Then she looked at him, and drew in her breath: "You know it?"

"Yes."

"How you must love me!"

* * * * *

There was a ring at the hall door. The footman opened it, held a short
parley with some one who was invisible, shut the door, and came upstairs
with a card.

Mrs Glinn took it, and read, "Lord Herbert Manning."

He had decided to be unconventional too late.

A SILENT GUARDIAN

I

The door of the long, dreary room, with its mahogany chairs, its
littered table, its motley crew of pale, silent people, opened
noiselessly. A dreary, lean footman appeared in the aperture, bowing
towards a corner where, in a recess near a forlorn, lofty window, sat a
tall, athletic-looking man of about forty-five years of age, with a
strong yet refined face, clean shaven, and short, crisp, dark hair. The
tall man rose immediately, laying down an old number of _Punch_, and
made his way out, watched rather wolfishly by the other occupants of the
room. The door closed upon him, and there was a slight rustle and a hiss
of whispering.

Two well-dressed women leaned to one another, the feathers in their hats
almost mingling as they murmured: "Not much the matter with him, I
should fancy."

"He looks as strong as a horse; but modern men are always imagining
themselves ill. He has lived too much, probably."

They laughed in a suppressed ripple.

At the end of the room near the door, under the big picture of a grave
man in a frock-coat, holding a double eye-glass tentatively in his right
hand as if to emphasise an argument--a young girl bent towards her
father, who said to her in a low voice:

"That man who has just left the room is Brune, the great sculptor."

"Is he ill?" the girl asked.

"It seems so, since he is here."

Then a silence fell again, broken only by the rustle of turned pages and
the occ