a very short time. I am afraid I can hardly promise that."

"How soon can you make me better?"

"These skin troubles are sometimes lengthy affairs. It will be
necessary for you to have a course of treatment. I should like to see
Mr--er--your husband, and talk the matter over with him."

But at that Claudia swept forward with a commanding air.

"It is impossible! I forbid it! He does not know that I am here
to-day. He must not know! If there is anything to be done, I must do
it without his knowledge! I cannot tell him. I dare not tell him: What
is it that is wrong with my face? It is only a little rash. _Why do
you look at me like that_? For God's sake say that it won't take long,
that it won't get worse; that I shall be able to--_to hide_ it from him;
to keep my beauty! _What is the matter_? Why don't you speak? You
must tell me. If you know! Whatever it is I _must_ bear it alone! I
daren't tell him--he must never know!"

The great doctor turned away his face. His lips moved, once and again,
before at last the dread word echoed through the room:

"_Lupus_!"

CHAPTER THREE.

THE GIRL WHO WISHED FOR ADVENTURE.

The girl who had wished for adventure journeyed back to her native
village two days after the New Year's party, and spent the following
eighteen months in tramping monotonously along a well-worn rut. The
only difference made by that oft-remembered conference was in her point
of view. Before that date she had sighed for the unattainable; after
it, the unattainable became the possible. Some day, if she but waited,
opportunity would come; some day the end of a thread would float
downward towards her hand, and grasping it, she would be led into a new
world! To the best of her power, she cultivated this attitude, and each
monotonous month, as it dragged past, added strength to her
determination to snatch the first opportunity that came her way.

At the end of eighteen months the girl packed up her trunk, and left
home to pay a dull visit to a great-aunt.

"Don't expect me to write letters," she said to her family at parting,
and the family groaned in chorus, and cried: "Please, don't! It's quite
enough for one of us to be victimised. Spare us the echoes of Aunt
Eliza! Just send a postcard when you're coming back."

Great-aunt Eliza was a daunting old lady who prided herself upon
speaking the truth.

"Goodness! How you have gone off," was the first remark which she
hurled at