how could she--how _could_ she?...
Anyhow, Gwen might have seen her way through that difficulty with a fair
chance. But--to be invisible!

The morning sun had been at variance with some flames, hard to believe
clouds, and had just dispersed them so successfully that their place in
the heavens knew them no more. His rays, unveiled, bore hard upon the
blue eyes, sore with watching, of the girl a hundred million miles off,
and drove her from her casement. Gwen of the Towers fell back into the
room, all the flowing lawn of the most luxurious _robe-de-nuit_ France
could provide turned to gold by the touch of Phoebus. She paused a
moment before a mirror, to glance at her pallor in it, and to wonder at
the sunlight in the wealth of its setting of ungroomed, uncontrollable
locks. It was not vanity exactly that provoked the despairing
thought:--"But he will never see me--never!" A girl would have been a
hypocrite indeed who could shut her eyes to what Gwen saw in that
looking-glass. She knew all about it--had done so from babyhood.

Some relaxation of the mind gave Morpheus an opportunity, and he took
such advantage of a willing victim that Lutwyche, coming three hours
later, scarcely knew how to deal with the case, and might have been
uneasy at such an intensive cultivation of sleep if she had been a
nervous person. But she was prosaic and phlegmatic, and held to the
general opinion that nothing unusual ever happened. So she was content
to make a little extra noise; and, when nothing came of it, to go away
till rung for. That was how Gwen came to be so late at breakfast that
morning.

CHAPTER XX

HOW THE HON. PERCIVAL GAVE MISS DICKENSON HIS ACCOUNT OF THE BLIND
MAN. HOW THAT ANY YOUNG MAN SOEVER IS GLAD THAT ANY YOUNG LADY
SOEVER ISN'T _FIANCEE_, EXCEPT SHE BE UGLY. MISS DICKENSON'S
EFFRONTERY. HOW MR. PELLEW SAID "POOH!" IRENE'S ABSENCE, VISITING.
EVERYONE'S ELSE ABSENCE, EXCEPT THE BLIND MAN'S, GWEN'S, AND MRS.
BAILEY'S, WHO HAD A LETTER TO WRITE

The Hon. Percival Pellew had not been at the Towers continuously
throughout the whole three weeks following the accident. The best club
in London could not have spared him as long as that. He had returned to
his place in the House a day or two later, had voted on the Expenses at
Elections Bill, and had then gone to a by-election in Cornwall to help
his candidate to keep his expenses at a minimum. His way back to the
club did not lie near