her. She
had been practically forced into submission, and she did not
attempt to disguise the fact from herself.

Yet if only Guy had not failed her, she knew that no power on earth
would have sufficed to move her, no clamour of battle could ever
have made her quail. That had been the chink in her armour, and
through that she had been pierced again and again, till she was
vanquished at last.

She felt too weary now, too utterly overwhelmed by circumstances,
to care what happened. Yes, she would cable to Guy as she had
said. But her confidence was gone. She was convinced already that
no word would come back in answer out of the void that had
swallowed him,

She went through the evening as one in a dream. People offered her
laughing congratulations, and she never knew how she received them.
She seemed to be groping her way through an all-enveloping mist of
despair.

One episode only stood out clearly from all the rest, and that was
when all were assembled at supper and out of the gay hubbub she
caught the sound of her own name. Then for a few intolerable
moments she became vividly alive to that which was passing around
her. She knew that George Preston's arm encircled her, and that
everyone present had risen to drink to their happiness.

As soon as it was over she crept away like a wounded thing and hid
herself. Only a miracle could save her now.

CHAPTER V

THE MIRACLE

"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Ingleton, rising to kiss her
step-daughter on the following morning, "I consider you are a
very--lucky--girl."

Sylvia received the kiss and passed on without reply. She was very
pale, but the awful inertia of the previous night had left her.
She was in full command of herself. She took up some letters from
a side table, and sat down with them.

Her step-mother eyed her for a moment or two in silence. Then:
"Well, my dear?" she said. "Have you nothing to say for yourself?"

"Nothing particular," said Sylvia.

The letters were chiefly letters of congratulation. She read them
with that composure which Mrs. Ingleton most detested, and put them
aside.

"Am I to have no share in the general rejoicing?" she asked at
length, in a voice that trembled with indignation.

Sylvia recognized the tremor. It had been the prelude to many a
storm. She got up and turned to the window. "You can read them
all if you like," she said. "I see Dad on the terrace. I am just
going to speak to him."

She pa