There was an Italian who had
held him in her enchantments for a whole winter, not to mention a
_gitana_, whose liquid eyes had kept him spell-bound under the walls of
the Alhambra, and others, fair and dark, tall and little, who had been--

"The summer pilots of an empty heart
Unto the shores of nothing."

But, as he had owned to his innermost self a hundred times, the woman
who was to reign over his life had not yet come. Would she ever come? He
had asked himself this question on the day when he had seen Elsie with
the rector. Certainly, there had been a strange attraction in her face.
It was beautiful, but he had seen beauties by the score; beauties of all
lands and of all grades, high and low. It was not Elsie's beauty which
had so strongly moved him, although it was of a type which he especially
admired. It was an expression--a something that was wistful and tender
in the eyes--a look as of one who was waiting before the fast-shut door
of paradise. In time the face might have passed out of his memory, but
it flashed upon him again at Richmond, and he had a prophetic feeling
that his fate had come to him at last.

The boy Jamie, as he saw at once, would be the connecting-link between
Elsie and himself. It would be perfectly right in him to call on one who
had taken so warm an interest in the nephew of his intimate friend.

Then, too, there had been something said about Miss Neale's manuscript,
in which his name was mentioned. He felt that he ought to examine the
manuscript, and carry out, as far as he could, the wishes of the writer.

These were the thoughts which came crowding into his mind during the
drive home from Richmond. Meanwhile Mrs. Verdon was talking to him in
silvery tones, and asking, with pleasant friendliness, whether he had
made any plans for the autumn. Jamie, rosy and sleepy, gave him an
indolent smile now and then. It was a curious thing, he reflected, that
the child should link him to Mrs. Verdon as well as to Miss Kilner. And
then he smiled to himself, remembering all that the Danforths had said
in this fair widow's praise. Her carriage set him down in a convenient
spot, and he walked away to his chambers in Piccadilly, pondering over
the strange adventures of the day.

Mrs. Verdon, although she loved liberty, was not unprotected, and her
late husband's sister--a Mrs. Tell--had lived with her all through the
years of her widowhood. Mrs. Tell, too, was a rich widow, tall, and of
impo