d to look up. She scarcely looked up, indeed, when Mr. Buckingham
bowed himself out, though he looked eagerly at her, in hopes once more
of catching the full light of her eyes.

She did look up, however, when the door closed behind the visitor, and
she looked straight at Mrs. Martindale. That lady answered her look
with one tear and a good many words:

"Well, Lillie, if you knew how I felt at getting into such a scrape, you
wouldn't look at me as if you were an Avenging Conscience, or a Nemesis,
or any of those horrid furies. No; and you wouldn't look speechlessly
sorrowful, either. Of course I ought to have told him at once that Henry
did not live here, and I ought to have sent him next door instead of
sending Kate, and I ought not to have pretended that he was coming the
next moment; but of course I thought he was at home, and then when he
came I could have laughed it off; but he didn't come, and I was too
frightened to laugh it off. Oh, yes, I am a criminal of the deepest dye;
but he's introduced, Lillie, and you've introduced him to me, and we're
all--we're all introduced."

X.

THE REAL HERO.

When a pile of wood has been laid upon smouldering embers, a thin curl
of smoke crawls lazily up the chimney, another follows with like
indolence, and it looks after a while as if the wood would not burn at
all. Suddenly a little whiff of air enters the pile, when, presto! up
blazes the fire, and soon there is a famous glow.

It was somewhat thus with Mr. Austin Buckingham. He had been toying with
the fancy of his story, and especially of this maiden to whom his eyes
had become so wonted, and had allowed himself to look at her in so many
lights, that she had gradually come to be always before him. The figure
of the hero had as gradually disappeared: it was only by an effort that
he could revive it. Suddenly he had sat a long quarter of an hour with
the girl, he had heard her voice, he had seen her smile, he had felt the
graciousness of her near presence when he was not merely at hand, but
the direct object of her thought. What a world of difference there was
between sitting by her side in a crowded horse-car and sitting even
half a room-breadth's away, when they two were the only ones in the
room!

By all this experience, as much perhaps by what had gone before as by
what had followed suddenly after, Buckingham now stood revealed to
himself. He was ablaze with this new, tingling, searching ardor. When he
had entere