you!" was all that he could find to say to express his
complicated state of mind.

"I do not deserve any thanks at all," Winifred answered. "I ought to
be well scolded for speaking slightingly of people whom I have just
been visiting. I do not often do such ill-mannered things, and I
should not have said it to any one but you."

Again Flint thrilled at the unconscious flattery.

"Will you come in to-morrow afternoon?" she asked, as he shut the
carriage door.

"To meet Captain Blathwayt? No, thank you."

"The day after then."

"So be it--till then, farewell!"

Flint re-entered the house with his heart beating like a trip-hammer.

CHAPTER XVIII

A MAIDEN'S VOW

"A maiden's vow, old Calham spoke,
Is lightly made and lightly broke."

As the cab rattled down the avenue, Winifred sank back against the
cushions. She sat in the corner in a sort of daze, marking the glimmer
of the electric lights, which seemed so many milestones in her life,
as she passed them one after another. After all, it is experience
which marks time, and in this day Winifred Anstice had tasted more of
life than in many a year before. Crashing into her world of calm
commonplace had fallen the dynamite bomb of an overwhelming emotion.
Her present, with all its preoccupying trifles, lay in wrecks about
her. For the future--it was too tumultuous to be faced.

She was like a person who has been walking in the darkness along a
familiar road, and suddenly feels himself plunging over an unsuspected
precipice. She was conscious of nothing but a gasping sense of
dizziness--all control of herself and her life seemed passing out of
her hands into those of another, and she scarcely knew whether to be
glad or sorry. Was it only this afternoon that she had looked upon a
marriage with Jonathan Flint as impossible? If she had thought so a
few hours ago, why not now? Nothing had occurred since. No
transcendent change had come over him or her--why should it all look
so different to her now? Perhaps, she told herself, this mood too
would pass like its precursor. She dared not feel sure of
anything--she who had swung round the whole compass of feeling like a
weather-vane before a thunder-storm.

These introspective reflections brought back irresistibly the feelings
with which she had read Flint's letter, little dreaming that it was
his,--the letter so full of