xiety, and thrown into reflected glow
of brilliant Berlin wool, a beautiful young spider in a gorgeous Afghan
web.

"I should like," she was saying as he entered, "to buy Pamela and the
girls some nice little presents. What would you advise me to get, Miss
Gower?"

She was very faithful to the shabby household at Downport. Her letters
were never careless or behind time, and no one was ever neglected in the
multiplicity of messages. She would be the most truthful and faithful of
loving women a few years hence, this handsome Theodora. There was some
reserve in her manner toward Denis this evening. She attended to Miss
Elizabeth's octagon-stitch, and left him to amuse Priscilla. He had not
seemed very much pleased to see her in the morning, and besides,
Priscilla was plainly his business. But when the carriage was announced,
and she returned to the parlor, after an absence of a few minutes,
drawing on her gloves, and buttoning her pretty jacket close up to her
beautiful slender, dusky throat, Denis took his hat and accompanied her
to the carriage. He did not wait for the footman this time; but, after
assisting her to get in, closed the door himself, and leaned against the
open window for a moment.

"I want you to deliver a message to Lady Throckmorton for me," he said.
"May I trouble you, Theodora?"

She bent her head with an unpleasantly-quickened heart-beat. It was very
foolish, of course, but she felt as if something painful was going to
happen, and nothing on earth could prevent it.

"Business has unexpectedly called me away from London--from England," he
explained, in a strange yet quite steady voice. "I am obliged to go to
Belgium at once, and my affairs are in such a condition that I may be
compelled to remain across the channel for some time. Be good enough to
say to Lady Throckmorton that I regret deeply that I could not see her
before going; but--but the news has been sudden, and my time is fully
occupied; but I will write to her from my first stopping-place."

"I will tell her," said Theodora.

"Thank you," he replied, courteously, and then, after a short
hesitation, began again, in the tone he used so often--the tone that
might be jest or earnest. "And now, there is something else, a subject
upon which I wish to ask your unbiased opinion, my dear Theodora, before
I say good-bye. When a man finds himself in a danger with which he
cannot combat, and remain human--in danger, where defeat means dishonor,
d