of the
briefest and least intelligible character. It was in a handwriting that
she knew well, and although it was unsigned she was tremulously ready
and eager to obey it at once. "Come back to your old lodgings at
Hampstead," the writer said. "Do not stay any longer at Birchmead: I
want you in London." And that was almost all.

Milly hovered all day long between alternations of wild hope and wild
despair. If she had been accustomed to self-analysis, she herself might
have been surprised to see how widely her present moods differed from
those which had dominated her when she lived at Maple Cottage. She was
then a vain, self-seeking little damsel, affectionate and uncorrupted,
with an empty head, indeed, but an innocent heart. Now both self-seeking
and vanity were being scourged out of her by force of the love which she
had learnt to feel. She was little changed in manner, and an observer
might have said that she was as childishly pleased as ever with a new
gaud or a pretty toy; but behind the self-sufficiency of her demeanor,
and the frivolity of her tastes, there was something new--something more
real and living than mere self-indulgence and conceit. The faculty of
giving and spending herself for others had sprung into being with the
first love she had known. For the man with whom she had gone away from
Lettice's house she was willing to lay down her life if he would but
accept the gift. And when he seemed loath to accept it, Milly became
conscious of a heart-sick shame and pain which had already often brought
tears that were not unworthy to her pretty childish eyes. The strength
of her own feelings frightened her sometimes: she did not know how to
resist the surging tide of passion and longing and regret that rose and
fell within her breast, as uncontrollable by her weak will as the waves
by the Danish king of history. Poor Milly's soul had been born within
her, as a woman's soul is often born through love, and the acquisition
cost her nothing but pain as yet, although it might ultimately lead her
to a higher life.

She arrived at the lodgings in Hampstead which had formerly been hers,
about five o'clock in the afternoon. The landlady received her
cordially, saying that "the gentleman had bespoke the rooms," and Milly
was taken at once into the sitting-room, which looked west, and was
lighted by a flood of radiance from the setting sun. Milly sank down on
a sofa, in hopeless fatigue.

"Did he say that he would be h