terable half which makes up every confidence. The
bitter pleasures of a conscience which caresses its worst burden were
the only real ones of her daily existence. When she could say, at the
end of the day, "I have fooled them all: they think I am happy, I am
not: they think Reckage amuses me, he doesn't. They think I delight in
these dull dinners and balls, I hate them," a sort of exultation--the
pride of a spirit singing under torture--would fill her whole being. All
youth that is strong and thoughtful has much of this instinct of
dissimulation. The world--to a young mind--appears controlled by
elderly, suspicious, hateful custodians ever on the alert to capture, or
thwart, every high enterprise and every passionate desire. There seems a
vast conspiracy against happiness--the withered, dreary wiseacres in
opposition to the joy, the daring, the beauty, the reckless vitality of
souls still under the spell of spring. When poor Sara could escape from
town into the country, mount her horse, and tear through a storm, the
neighbours compared her to a witch on a broomstick, and, shaking their
heads, would foresee much sipping of sorrow by the spoonful in the
future of Lord Garrow. To-day, however, the young lady assumed her most
demure expression, and received the guests at luncheon as though she had
never learnt the meaning of tears nor joined the gale in spirit.

Sir Piers Harding was the last to arrive. He was a thick-set, livid man
with an unyielding smile and the yellow eyes of one whom rich diet
rather than an angry god had rendered melancholy.

"You haven't changed in the least," he said, considering Lord Garrow
with some resentment.

"Ah, well!" replied his lordship, "eleven years do not make much
difference at my time of life. You, however, are decidedly greyer. Where
have you been hiding yourself? I think you were foolish to leave
England. Gladstone was remarking but the other day, 'Harding was always
so cocksure.' 'And wasn't he right?' said I. 'Of course,' said he; 'and
that was the worst of him. He _was_ right. Who could stand it?' That's
the world. It's devilish unappreciative of the truth."

Reckage, much bored by the old men, stood by Pensee's chair, where he
could watch Sara and angle for her glance. When it happened that she
smiled at him a little--either in mere friendship or mockery--he felt a
kind of fire steal through his veins, and he told himself that she was a
dangerous woman--a woman who could get