d already given much pain in her
short life, but inadvertently. She was of that large class of whom it
may truly be said when evil comes, that they are more sinned against
than sinning. They always somehow gravitate into the places where people
_are_ sinned against, just as some people never attend a cricket-match
without receiving a ball on their persons.

And now trouble had come upon her. She had at last fallen in love. I
would not venture to assert that she had fallen in very deep, that the
"breakers of the boundless deep" had engulfed her. Some of us make
shipwreck in a teacup tempest, and when our serenity is restored--there
is nothing calmer than a teacup after its storm--our experience serves,
after a decent interval, as an agreeable fringe to our confidential
conversation.

Anyhow, Fay had fallen in love. I feel bound to add that for some time
before that event happened life had become intolerably dull. The advent
to Rome of her distant connection, Michael Carstairs, had been at this
juncture a source of delight to her. She had, before her marriage,
flirted with him a very little--not as much as she could have wished;
but Lady Bellairs, who was fond of him, had promptly intervened, and the
young man had disappeared into his examinations. That was four years
ago.

In reality Fay had half-forgotten him; but when she saw him suddenly,
pale, handsome, distinguished, across a ballroom in Rome, and, after a
moment's uncertainty, realised who he was, she felt the same pleasurable
surprise, soft as the fall of dew, which pervades the feminine heart
when, in looking into an unused drawer, it inadvertently haps upon a
length of new ribbon, bought, carefully put away, and forgotten.

Fay went gently up to Michael, conscious of her beauty and her wonderful
jewels, and held out her hand with a little deprecating smile.

"And so we meet again at last," she said.

He turned red and white.

"At last," he said with difficulty.

She looked more closely at him. The dreamy, poetic face had changed
during those four years. She became dimly aware that he had not only
grown from a youth into a man, but that some other transformation had
been painfully wrought in him.

Instinctively her beaming face became grave to match his. She was slow
to see what others were feeling, but quick to reflect their mood. She
sighed gently, vaguely stirred, in spite of herself, by something--she
knew not what--in her companion's face.

"It