n, and her thoughts flew back to the
brief period of their engagement. She had been just Kitty Arlton in
those days, the daughter of a poor sea-captain but dowered with
the compensating grace of personal attractions. Providence had
indisputably designed her for the establishment of the family
fortunes; such at all events was the family creed, and the girl
herself felt no inclination to doubt a faith which was backed by the
evidence of her looking-glass. Julian Fairholm at that time shared a
studio with her brother, and the acquaintance thus begun ripened into
an attachment and ended in a betrothal. For Julian, in the common
prediction, possessed that vague blessing, a future. It is true the
common prediction was always protected by a saving clause: "If he
could struggle free from his mysticism." But none the less his
pictures were beginning to sell, and the family displayed a moderate
content. The discomposing appearance of Sir John Tamworth, however,
gave a different complexion to the matter. Sir John was rich, and had
besides the confident pertinacity of success. In a word, Kitty Arlton
married Sir John.

Lady Tamworth's recollections of the episode were characteristically
vague; they came back to her in pieces like disconnected sections of
a wooden puzzle. She remembered that she had written an exquisitely
pathetic letter to Fairholm "when the end came," as she expressed it;
and she recalled queer scraps of the artist's talk about the danger
of forming ties. "New ties," he would say, "mean new duties, and they
hamper and clog the will." Ah yes, the will; he was always holding
forth about that and here was the lecture finally exemplified! He
was selling baby-linen in the Mile-End road. She had borne her
disappointment, she reflected, without any talk about will. The
thought of her self-sacrifice even now brought the tears to her eyes;
she saw herself wearing her orange-blossoms in the spirit of an
Iphigeneia.

Sections of the puzzle, however, were missing to Lady Tamworth's
perceptions. For, in fact, her sense of sacrifice had been mainly
artificial, and fostered by a vanity which made the possession of a
broken romance seem to pose her on a notable pedestal of duty. What
had really attracted her to Julian was the evidence of her power shown
in the subjugation of a being intellectually higher than his compeers.
It was not so much the man she had cared for, as the sight of herself
in a superior setting; a sure proof