e shook her head.

"Cavalisti would be too egotistical for the part," she said quietly. "It
is difficult."

Not another word was spoken until the curtain fell. Francis lingered
for a moment over the arrangement of her cloak. Sir Timothy was already
outside, talking to some acquaintances.

"It has been a great pleasure to see you like this unexpectedly," he
said, a little wistfully.

"I cannot imagine why," she answered, with an undernote of trouble in
her tone. "Remember the advice I gave you before. No good can come of
any friendship between my father and you."

"There is this much of good in it, at any rate," he answered, as he
held open the door for her. "It might give me the chance of seeing you
sometimes."

"That is not a matter worth considering," she replied.

"I find it very much worth considering," he whispered, losing his head
for a moment as they stood close together in the dim light of the box,
and a sudden sense of the sweetness of her thrilled his pulses. "There
isn't anything in the world I want so much as to see you oftener--to
have my chance."

There was a momentary glow in her eyes. Her lips quivered. The few words
which he saw framed there--he fancied of reproof--remained unspoken. Sir
Timothy was waiting for them at the entrance.

"I have been asking Mrs. Hilditch's permission to call in Curzon
Street," Francis said boldly.

"I am sure my daughter will be delighted," was the cold but courteous
reply.

Margaret herself made no comment. The car drew up and she stepped into
it--a tall, slim figure, wonderfully graceful in her unrelieved black,
her hair gleaming as though with some sort of burnish, as she passed
underneath the electric light. She looked back at him with a smile of
farewell as he stood bareheaded upon the steps, a smile which reminded
him somehow of her father, a little sardonic, a little tender, having in
it some faintly challenging quality. The car rolled away. People around
were gossiping--rather freely.

"The wife of that man Oliver Hilditch," he heard a woman say, "the man
who was tried for murder, and committed suicide the night after his
acquittal. Why, that can't be much more than three months ago."

"If you are the daughter of a millionaire," her escort observed, "you
can defy convention."

"Yes, that was Sir Timothy Brast," another man was saying. "He's
supposed to be worth a cool five millions."

"If the truth about him were known," his companion confided, d