reasure to her feet, or strewed
her life with wreckage, she felt, even now; that her place was there, on
the banks, in sound and sight of the great current; and just in
proportion as the scheme of life at Lynbrook succeeded in shutting out
all sense of that vaster human consciousness, so did its voice speak
more thrillingly within her.

Somewhere, she felt--but, alas! still out of reach--was the life she
longed for, a life in which high chances of doing should be mated with
the finer forms of enjoying. But what title had she to a share in such
an existence? Why, none but her sense of what it was worth--and what did
that count for, in a world which used all its resources to barricade
itself against all its opportunities? She knew there were girls who
sought, by what is called a "good" marriage, an escape into the outer
world, of doing and thinking--utilizing an empty brain and full pocket
as the key to these envied fields. Some such chance the life at Lynbrook
seemed likely enough to offer--one is not, at Justine's age and with her
penetration, any more blind to the poise of one's head than to the turn
of one's ideas; but here the subtler obstacles of taste and pride
intervened. Not even Bessy's transparent manoeuvrings, her tender
solicitude for her friend's happiness, could for a moment weaken
Justine's resistance. If she must marry without love--and this was
growing conceivable to her--she must at least merge her craving for
personal happiness in some view of life in harmony with hers.

A tap on her door interrupted these musings, to one aspect of which
Bessy Amherst's entrance seemed suddenly to give visible expression.

"Why did you run off, Justine? You promised to be down-stairs when I
came back from tennis."

"_Till_ you came back--wasn't it, dear?" Justine corrected with a smile,
pushing her arm-chair forward as Bessy continued to linger irresolutely
in the doorway. "I saw that there was a fresh supply of tea in the
drawing-room, and I knew you would be there before the omnibus came from
the station."

"Oh, I was there--but everybody was asking for you----"

"Everybody?" Justine gave a mocking lift to her dark eyebrows.

"Well--Westy Gaines, at any rate; the moment he set foot in the house!"
Bessy declared with a laugh as she dropped into the arm-chair.

Justine echoed the laugh, but offered no comment on the statement which
accompanied it, and for a moment both women were silent, Bessy tilting
her pret