red the words in her tiny heart, and felt sure that she could
never find courage to say them aloud to that great and important man.
The announcement would be too monstrous, incredible, and absurd. People
would laugh. He would laugh. And Nina could stand anything better than
being laughed at. Even supposing she proved to him his paternity--she
thought of the horridness of going to lawyers' offices--he might decline
to recognise her. Or he might throw her fifty pounds a year, as one
throws sixpence to an importunate crossing-sweeper, to be rid of her.
The United States existed in her mind chiefly as a country of
highly-remarkable divorce laws, and she thought that Mr. Belmont might
have married again. A fashionable and arrogant Mrs. Belmont, and a
dazzling Miss Belmont, aged possibly eighteen, might arrive, both of
them steeped in all conceivable luxury, at any moment. Where would Nina
be then, with her two-and-eleven-pence-halfpenny blouse from Glave's?...

Mr. Belmont, accompanied by Alphonse, the head-waiter in the _salle a
manger_, descended in the lift and crossed the hall to the portico,
where he stood talking for a few seconds. Mr. Belmont turned, and, as he
conversed with Alphonse, gazed absently in the direction of the bureau.
He looked straight through the pretty captive. After all, despite his
superficial heartiness, she could be nothing to him--so rich, assertive,
and truly important. A hansom was called for him, and he departed; she
observed that he was in evening dress now.

No! Her cause was just; but it was too startling--that was what was the
matter with it.

Then she told herself she would write to Lionel Belmont. She would write
a letter that night.

At nine-thirty she was off duty. She went upstairs to her perch in the
roof, and sat on her bed for over two hours. Then she came down again
to the bureau with some bluish note-paper and envelopes in her hand,
and, in response to the surprised question of the pink-frocked colleague
who had taken her place, she explained that she wanted to write a
letter.

'You do look that bad, Miss Malpas,' said the other girl, who made a
speciality of compassion.

'Do I?' said Nina.

'Yes, you do. What have you got _on_, _now_, my poor dear?'

'What's that to you? I'll thank you to mind your own business, Miss
Bella Perkins.'

Usually Nina was not soon ruffled; but that night all her nerves were
exasperated and exceedingly sensitive.

'Oh!' said the girl. 'Wh