her advantage? Perhaps he ought to throw up his engagement, and,
passing out of her life, leave her to reap the "good the gods provide."

In vain he tries to argue himself into this heroic frame of mind. The
more he tries, the more obnoxious grows the idea. He cannot, he will
not give her up.

"Faint heart," says Teddy, flinging the remnant of his cigar with
fierce determination into the grate, "never won fair lady; she is mine,
so far, the fairest darling that ever breathed, and be it selfish or
otherwise, keep her I will if I can."

But he sighs as he utters the word "can," and finds his couch, when at
length he does seek it, by no means a bed of roses.

While Molly, the pretty cause of all this heart-burning, lies in
slumber, soft and sweet, and happy as can be, with her "red, red" lips
apart and smiling, her breathing pure and regular as a little child's,
and all her "nut-brown" hair like a silken garment round her.

Cecil Stafford, walking leisurely up and down her apartment, is feeling
half frightened, half amused, at the news conveyed to her by Mr. Potts,
of her husband's arrival in England. Now, at last, after these three
years, she may meet him at any moment face to face.

Surely never was a story so odd, so strange as hers! A bride unknown, a
wife whose face has never yet been seen!

"Well," thinks Cecil, as she seats herself while her maid binds up her
long fair hair, "no use troubling about it beforehand. What must be
must be. And at all events the dreaded interview cannot be too soon, as
until my return to town I believe I am pretty safe from him here."

But in saying this she reckons without her host in every sense of the
word.

CHAPTER XIV.

"Oh, beware, my lord, of jealousy;
It is the green-eyed monster who doth mock
The meat it feeds on."

--_Othello._

Next day at luncheon Mr. Amherst, having carefully mapped out one of
his agreeable little surprises, and having selected a moment when every
one is present, says to her, with a wicked gleam of anticipative
amusement in his cunning old eyes:

"Sir Penthony is in England."

Although she has neither hint nor warning of what is coming, Lady
Stafford is a match for him. Mr. Potts's intelligence of the evening
before stands her now in good stead.

"Indeed!" she says, without betraying any former knowledge, turning
eyes of the calmest upon him; "you surprise me. Tired so soon of
Egyptian sphinxes! I always knew h