ct of nothing at
all, and now and then Liance interjected an apposite sally; but Tancred
was taciturn. He divided his time between biting his moustache and
bidding Zut be still. And when at last through some channel of thought
Mrs. Lyeth anchored herself in the shallows of Anglo-Saxon verse, for a
moment the young man fancied that the girl was about to go. Liance made
a movement, but whether some signal from her future step-mother detained
her, or whether of her own accord she reconsidered her purpose, Tancred
was unable to decide. The girl resumed her seat, and, one arm extended
on the woodwork, the other pendent at her side, her feet crossed, her
head thrown back, she sat staring at the stars in that abstracted
attitude which powder and shot are alone qualified to disturb.

There is much in an opportunity that might be and is not. In
recollection it appears more fecund in possibilities than any other
opportunity ever enjoyed. And later on, when Tancred, without having
had the opportunity to exchange in private so much as a word with Mrs.
Lyeth, found himself in his room, he ravened at fate and at his own
ill-luck. Nothing that he could imagine would have been sweeter to him
than to have sat the evening through alone with that human flower. There
would have been no need of speech; the languors of the night, the caress
of the stars, the scent of palms and of orchids, the accent of the waves
beyond, these things would have spoken for him more subtly than words
could do. Through their silence the breeze would have whispered, and who
does not know what a breeze can say? Though they sat apart, the stars
that the old gods used as go-betweens were there to join their hands.
They might be timid, but is not the surge of the sea a call that stirs
the pulse? And the palms had their secrets to tell, and they would have
told them, too; nay, the very fire-flies would have conspired together
and made the night more dark. And, instead of a communion such as that,
there had been an aimless chit-chat, an awkwardness that was sentient,
and an embarrassment terminated only by a chill "Good-night." Truly Zut,
who had treed a hedgehog, was to be envied. His evening at least had not
been squandered and misspent.

The morrow differed from the day preceding merely in this, that not for
one instant during it did Tancred have an opportunity of seeing either
Mrs. Lyeth or Liance alone. After tiffin they were inseparate. And
Tancred, who had made