py him very
long. When he saw Cleo again it was arranged that she should take the
requisite formal steps for their marriage before the registrar, and
that she should also begin negotiations for the renting of a Strand
theatre. She had had her final reckoning with Ingram, who had assumed
an air of indifference, and had not wanted to know anything about her
plans or future movements.

"'Since you have made up your mind,' he said, 'I have no option but to
bow to your wishes.' But I could see that his lips were drawn as if
his heart ached at having to lose me. I must have meant so much to him
all this time. Poor Robert!"

"Of course, I gave him back his money," she went on, when her emotion
had subsided. "He took that with the same indifference. He said he
could quite appreciate my feeling about it and he would not oppose my
wishes on the point."

As regards his family and friends, Morgan made up his mind to write to
his father, to Lady Thiselton, and to Mrs. Medhurst, simply announcing
the mere fact that he had married. He would not give any particulars
nor say a word as to the personality of Cleo. The rest of his
acquaintances he would simply ignore.

CHAPTER VII.

However, on the day before his marriage, Morgan happened to come
across Mrs. Medhurst's dance card amid a heap of papers he was about
to destroy, and somewhat to his surprise found it was for that very
evening. He had accepted the invitation verbally, when talking to Mrs.
Medhurst at the studio-warming. And now a strange notion seemed to
come whizzing at him and he arrested it with a clutch.

Why should he not go and dance with Margaret for the last time?

In a moment his mind was made up. And shortly after ten o'clock he
found himself being received by Mrs. Medhurst. A half-dizziness came
over him as he shook hands with her--the festal atmosphere that
pervaded the rooms seemed to blur his senses. He would have stumbled
had it not been that Margaret's voice fell upon his ear just then, and
he became aware that her hand was in his. He saw her, as she stood at
her mother's side, a clear and gracious figure against the mist of
things.

She was in white to-night with just a lily in her hair, and it showed
graciously in a dainty setting of green. An adorable tiny edge of arm
peeped between sleeve and glove. Morgan thought of the lines Helen had
whispered to him at the Whitechapel Coffee House:

"The Blessed Damozel leaned out
From the