aze,
he half averted his glance?

"I am afraid I am poor company," she said rather lamely. "I must have
been silent quite a long time. I was thinking--thinking out some knotty
problem which would draw down your superior lordship's indulgent pity,"
with a flash of all her former bright spirits.

"And its nature?"

"If you will promise not to sneer I'll tell you. You will? Well, then, I
was thinking whether I would have that gold-yellow dress done up with
mauve sleeves or black, for Wednesday week."

Whether he believed her or not it was impossible to determine from the
demeanour wherewith this statement was received. She was inclined to
think he did, which spoke volumes for his tactfulness; and is it not of
the very essence of that far too uncommon virtue to impress your
interlocutor with the conviction that you believe exactly as he--or
she--wants you to? In point of fact, there was something heroically
pathetic in the way in which each mind strove to veil from the other its
inner workings, while every day showed more and more the impossibility
of keeping up the figment.

Yet, for all this, there were times when the possession, the certainty
of Lilith's--"sympathy" she had called it, would fail to cheer, to
strengthen. Darker and darker grew the days, more hopeless the prospect,
and soon Laurence Stanninghame found himself not merely face to face
with poverty, but on the actual verge of destitution. Grim, fell
spectres haunted his waking hours no less than his dreams. Did he return
from a few hours of hard exercise with a fine appetite, that healthy
possession served but to remind him how soon he would be without the
means of gratifying it. He pictured himself utterly destitute, and
through his sleeping visions would loom hideous spectres of want and
degradation. Day or night, waking or sleeping, it was ever the same; the
horror of the position was ever before him and would not be laid. His
mind was a hell to him, his heart of lead, his hard, clear brain deadly,
self-pitiless in its purpose. Obviously, there was no further room in
the world for such as he.

CHAPTER IX.

HIS GUARDIAN ANGEL.

"I'd sell my immortal soul, twenty times over, for a few thousands of
the damnation stuff; but as that article isn't negotiable, why, better
make an end of the whole bother."

Thus Laurence to himself, though unconsciously aloud. His room was an
end one on the _stoep_, and the door was open. The time was the middl