ters--something that Lady Cantourne had known all along.

"And was Mr. Meredith on the Plateau when it was besieged?" asked
Millicent, with a drawn, crooked smile.

"Yes," answered Jocelyn. She could not help seizing the poor little
satisfaction of this punishment; but she felt all the while that it was
nothing to the punishment she was bearing, and would bear all her life.
There are few more contradictory things than the heart of a woman who
really loves. For one man it is very tender; for the rest of the world
it is the hardest heart on earth if it is called upon to defend the
object of its love or the love itself.

"But," cried Millicent, "of course something was done. They could never
leave Mr. Meredith unprotected."

"Yes," answered Jocelyn quietly, "Mr. Oscard went up and rescued him. My
brother heard yesterday that the relief had been effected."

Millicent smiled again in her light-hearted way.

"That is all right," she said. "What a good thing we did not know! Just
think, auntie dear, what a lot of anxiety we have been spared!"

"In the height of the season, too!" said Jocelyn.

"Ye--es," replied Millicent, rather doubtfully.

Lady Cantourne was puzzled. There was something going on which she did
not understand. Within the sound of the pleasant conversation there was
the cliquetis of the foil; behind the polite smile there was the gleam
of steel. She was rather relieved to turn at this moment and see Sir
John Meredith entering the room with his usual courtly bow. He always
entered her drawing-room like that. Ah! that little secret of a mutual
respect. Some people who are young now will wish, before they have grown
old, that they had known it.

He shook hands with Lady Cantourne and with Millicent. Then he stood
with a deferential half-bow, waiting for the introduction to the girl
who was young enough to be his daughter--almost to be his granddaughter.
There was something pathetic and yet proud in this old man's
uncompromising adherence to the lessons of his youth.

"Sir John Meredith--Miss Gordon."

The beginning--the thin end of the wedge, as the homely saying has
it--the end which we introduce almost every day of our lives, little
suspecting to what it may broaden out.

"I had the pleasure of seeing you last night," said Sir John at once,
"at Lady Fitzmannering's evening party, or 'At Home,' I believe we call
them nowadays. Some of the guests read the invitation too much au pied
de la lettre for