amation, and, coming eagerly forward, smilingly held out
her arms for the kitten. She was dressed for the evening, and the
little thing began clawing about her lovely gown, and in one instant had
pulled to shreds a very expensive bit of trimming.

I started up in distress; but Janet, putting the kitten gently back on
the table, burst into laughter. I am very sure I had never heard Janet
laugh before, and I don't think Paul ever had. A prettier, happier, more
silvery little peal could not be imagined; but it was not so much that
which struck home to my heart as the fact that if I had shut my eyes I
could have thought _my_ Janet stood in the room. The girl had her
mother's laugh.

I returned hastily to my work, and did not dare to lift my head until
Janet was gone--then I looked stealthily at Paul.

The sun was just setting--the sky a rolling roseate glory from end to
end. Paul--my Paul--my Paul, with the old beautiful light in his face,
stood, with arms crossed, looking up into it. All at once something came
into my throat which almost stifled me, so that I could not have sat
where I was for any consideration whatever. I slipped quietly away and
left him.

From this day I loved the girl. Whether it was her carelessness about
the dress--so like her mother--or the laugh--or what--I loved her now
almost as much as I had loved her mother.

It seemed to me that from this day, too, Paul became more like his old
self: a very much toned-down and softened old self; no longer so much
the hard, cynical Paul of later years as the boyish Paul of old. Of
course, no sooner had my feelings changed in this way than I became
greatly interested in Janet's lovers. I thought the cotton millionaire
vulgar; and the American railway king I could not make this or that of;
but the lord seemed a very nice, simple-mannered young man; so that I
hoped--for although I am a bit of a Radical, I lay claim to having some
common-sense too--if it were to be one of these three, it would be he.

But the calm indifference with which this slip of a girl treated three
such lovers was truly appalling. I can't think how they stood it: I
shouldn't.

I cannot remember exactly when it was that I made a discovery. Opposite
to the library, of which I have already spoken, now a venerable old
room, was my bed-room; and there was no other room until you had gone
along a passage and crossed a hall. It was my custom to go to bed very
early, and I did so here at Dunc