adose replied, 'She was going away from us--she
crossed the road. We were coming towards the station.'

'And did she appear to recognise the Colonel--did she look round?'

'Yes; she looked round, but I didn't notice much. A hansom came along
and we got into it. It was not till then that Clement told me who she
was: I remember he said that she was there for no good. I suppose we
ought to have gone back.'

'Yes; you would have saved the picture.'

For a moment she said nothing; then she smiled. 'For you, I am very
sorry. But you must remember that I possess the original!'

At this Lyon turned away. 'Well, I must go,' he said; and he left her
without any other farewell and made his way out of the house. As he went
slowly up the street the sense came back to him of that first glimpse of
her he had had at Stayes--the way he had seen her gaze across the table
at her husband. Lyon stopped at the corner, looking vaguely up and down.
He would never go back--he couldn't. She was still in love with the
Colonel--he had trained her too well.

MRS. TEMPERLY

I

'Why, Cousin Raymond, how can you suppose? Why, she's only sixteen!'

'She told me she was seventeen,' said the young man, as if it made a
great difference.

'Well, only _just_!' Mrs. Temperly replied, in the tone of graceful,
reasonable concession.

'Well, that's a very good age for me. I'm very young.'

'You are old enough to know better,' the lady remarked, in her soft,
pleasant voice, which always drew the sting from a reproach, and enabled
you to swallow it as you would a cooked plum, without the stone. 'Why,
she hasn't finished her education!'

'That's just what I mean,' said her interlocutor. 'It would finish it
beautifully for her to marry me.'

'Have you finished yours, my dear?' Mrs. Temperly inquired. 'The way you
young people talk about marrying!' she exclaimed, looking at the
itinerant functionary with the long wand who touched into a flame the
tall gas-lamp on the other side of the Fifth Avenue. The pair were
standing, in the recess of a window, in one of the big public rooms of
an immense hotel, and the October day was turning to dusk.

'Well, would you have us leave it to the old?' Raymond asked. 'That's
just what I think--she would be such a help to me,' he continued. 'I
want to go back to Paris to study more. I have come home too soon. I
don't know half enough; they know more here than I thought. So it would
be perfectly easy,