hearts. They were very much in love
with each other, and so far their love had been a striking exception to
that old proverb which comes true only too often. Saving only those
lovers' quarrels which don't count because they end so much more
pleasantly than they begin, there had never been a cloud in that
morning-sky of life towards which they had so far walked hand in hand.
It seemed as though the Fates themselves had conspired to make
everything pleasant and easy for them; and of course it had never struck
either of them that when the Fates do this kind of thing, they always
have a more or less heavy account on the other side--to be presented in
due course.

Lady Raleigh knew this, and her daughter did not. She knew that the
terrible explanation had to come, but she very naturally shrank from
the inevitable--and so, woman-like, she temporised.

"Really, dear," she said, "I can't talk with all this jolting and
rattle. When we get home I will tell you all about it. Vane himself is
not ill at all. He is just as well as ever he was. It isn't that."

"Then I suppose," said Miss Enid, looking round sharply, "my lord has
been getting himself into some scrape or other--something that has to be
explained or talked away before he likes to meet me. Is that it?"

"No, Enid, that is not it," replied her mother gravely, "but really,
dear, I must ask you to say nothing more about it just now. When we get
home we'll have a cup of tea, and then I'll tell you all about it."

"Oh, very well," said Enid, a trifle petulantly. "I suppose there's some
mystery about it. Of course there must be, or else he'd have come here
himself, so we may as well change the subject. How do you like the new
flat, and what's it like?"

As she said this she threw herself back again into the corner and stared
out of the opposite window of the brougham with a look in her eyes which
seemed to say that for the time being she had no further interest in any
earthly affairs.

Lady Raleigh, glad of the relief even for the moment, at once began a
voluble and minute description of the new flat in Addison Gardens into
which they had moved during her daughter's last sojourn in Paris, and
this, with certain interjections and questions from Enid, lasted until
the brougham turned into the courtyard and drew up in front of the
arched doorway out of which the tall, uniformed porter came with the
fingers of his left hand raised to the peak of his cap, to open the
carria