enzi's. Never had she seemed so beautiful to him since that
first day; but he had called again and again, against his brother's
urgent advice (when he had confessed the first visit); and the story
that the Duchess of Amidon was telling her friends, though founded
entirely on her own imagination of the scene which had brought about
Stephen's undoing, was not very far from the truth.

Now, he saw a picture of Margot as he had seen her in the lodgings she
hated; and he wished to heaven that he might think of her as he had
thought of her then.

"I've got something important to say to you," the girl went on, when she
realized that Stephen intended to dismiss the subject of the hotel, as
he had dismissed the subject of the interview. "That's the reason I
wired. But I won't speak a word till you've told me what your brother
and the Duchess of Amidon think about you and me."

"There's nothing to tell," Stephen answered almost sullenly. And indeed
there was no news of his Cumberland visit which it would be pleasant or
wise to retail.

Margot Lorenzi's complexion was not one of her greatest beauties. It was
slightly sallow, so she made artistic use of a white cosmetic, which
gave her skin the clearness of a camellia petal. But she had been
putting on rather more than usual since her father's death, because it
was suitable as well as becoming to be pale when one was in deep
mourning. Consequently Margot could not turn perceptibly whiter, but she
felt the blood go ebbing away from her face back upon her heart.

"Stephen! Don't they mean to receive me, when we're married?" she
stammered.

"I don't think they've much use for either of us," Stephen hedged, to
save her feelings. "Northmorland and I have never been great pals, you
know. He's twenty years older than I am; and since he married the
Duchess of Amidon----"

"And her money! Oh, it's no use beating about the bush. I hate them
both. Lord Northmorland has a fiendish, vindictive nature."

"Come, you mustn't say that, Margot. He has nothing of the sort. He's a
curious mixture. A man of the world, and a bit of a Puritan----"

"So are you a Puritan, at heart," she broke in.

Stephen laughed. "No one ever accused me of Puritanism before."

"Maybe you've never shown any one else that side of you, as you show it
to me. You're always being shocked at what I do and say."

For that, it was hardly necessary to be a Puritan. But Stephen shrugged
his shoulders instead of answer