her visitor arrived she might be ready to
leave the house as soon as he did.

"It won't do to keep Grif waiting too long, even for Mollie's sake," she
said. "I must consider him, too. If Mr. Gowan does not come by six or
half-past, I shall be obliged to go."

She purposely prolonged her toilet, even though it had occupied a
greater length of time than usual in the first instance. There had
been a new acquisition in the shape of a dress to don, and one or two
coquettish aids to appearance, which were also novelties. But before six
o'clock she was quite ready, and, having nothing else to do, was reduced
to the necessity of standing before the glass and taking stock of
herself and her attire.

"It fits," she soliloquized, curving her neck in her anxiety to obtain a
back view of herself. "It fits like a glove, and so Grif will be sure to
like it. His admiration for clothes that fit amounts to a monomania. He
will make his usual ecstatic remarks on the subject of figure, too. And
I must confess," with modest self-satisfaction,--"I must confess that
those frills are not unbecoming. If we were only rich--and married--how
I would dress, to please him! Being possessed of a figure, one's results
are never uncertain. Figure is a weakness of mine, also. With the
avoirdupois of Miss Jolliboy, life would appear a desert. Ten thousand
per annum would not console me. And yet she wears sables and seal-skin,
and is happy. It is a singular fact, worthy of the notice of the
philosopher, that it is such women who invariably possess the sable and
seal-skin. Ah, well!" charitably, "I suppose it is a dispensation of
Providence. When they attain that size they need some compensation."

Often in after time she remembered the complacent little touch of
vanity, and wondered how it had been possible that she could stand
there, making so thoughtless and foolish a speech when danger was so
near, and so much of sharp, passionate suffering was approaching her.

She had waited until the last minute, and finding, on consulting her
watch, that it was past six, she decided to wait no longer. She took
up her gloves from the dressing-table and drew them on; she settled
the little drooping plume in her hat and picked up her muff, and then,
giving a last glance and a saucy nod to the piquant reflection in the
glass, she opened her bedroom door to go out.

And then it was, just at this last moment, that there came a ring at the
hall-door bell,--evidently