culated that if he were punctual to the moment, she would
think that he thought the matter to be important. It was important to
him, and he was willing that she should know that it was so. But there
are degrees in everything, and therefore he was twenty minutes late. He
was not the first man who has weighed the diplomatic advantage of being
after his time. But all those ideas went from him at once when she met
him almost at the door of the room, and, taking him by the hand, said
that she was "so glad to see him--so very glad. Fancy, Harry, I haven't
seen an old friend since I saw you last. You don't know how hard all
that seems."

"It is hard," said he; and when he felt the pressure of her hand and saw
the brightness of her eye, and when her dress rustled against him as he
followed her to her seat, and he became sensible of the influence of her
presence, all his diplomacy vanished, and he was simply desirous of
devoting himself to her service. Of course, any such devotion was to be
given without detriment to that other devotion which he owed to Florence
Burton. But this stipulation, though it was made, was made quickly, and
with a confused brain.

"Yes--it is hard," she said. "Harry, sometimes I think I shall go mad.
It is more than I can bear. I could bear it if it hadn't been my own
fault--all my own fault."

There was a suddenness about this which took him quite by surprise.
No doubt it had been her own fault. He also had told himself that;
though, of course, he would make no such charge to her. "You have not
recovered yet," he said, "from what you have suffered lately. Things will
look brighter to you after a while."

"Will they? Ah--I do not know. But come, Harry; come and sit down, and
let me get you some tea. There is no harm, I suppose, in having you
here--is there ?"

"Harm, Lady Ongar?"

"Yes--harm, Lady Ongar." As she repeated her own name after him, nearly
in his tone, she smiled once again; and then she looked as she used in
the old days, when she would be merry with him. "It is hard to know what
a woman may do, and what she may not. When my husband was ill and dying,
I never left his bedside. From the moment of my marrying him till his
death, I hardly spoke to a man but in his presence; and when once I did,
it was he that had sent him. And for all that people have turned their
backs upon me. You and I were old friends, Harry, and something more
once--were we not? But I jilted you, as you were man en