ence as an art to stimulate his devotion, she was to be
congratulated on her success. His dream had been nourished on this
ambrosial uncertainty.

Upstairs in his bedroom mere emotional belief in Miss Tancred had
risen to rational conviction. The first aspect of the guest-chamber
had inspired him with a joyous credulity. It wooed him with its
large and welcoming light, its four walls were golden white and
warm, and in all its details he had found unmistakable evidences of
design. There was an overruling coquetry in the decorative effects,
in the minute little arrangements for his comfort. A finer hand than
any housemaid's must have heaped that blue china bowl with roses,
laid out that writing-table, and chosen the books in the shelf
beside the bed. A woman is known by her books as by her
acquaintance, and he had judged of the mind of this maiden, turning
over the pages with a thrill of sensuous curiosity. This charming
Providence had fitted his mood to perfection with these little
classics of the hour, by authors too graceful and urbane to bore a
poor mortal with their immortality. Adorable Miss Tancred! He was in
love with her before sight, at half-sight.

For at the sound of a punctual gong he had hurried out on to the
stairs, a door had opened on some unseen landing, he had heard a
woman's step on the flight below; he had listened, he had watched,
and as he caught the turn of her head, the rustle and gleam of her
gown, some divine and cloudy color, silver or lavender or airy blue,
he had been radiantly certain that his vision had passed before him.
Down there somewhere it was making itself incarnate in the unknown.
He felt already its reviving presence, the mysterious aura of its
womanhood.

Hitherto his imagination had been guided by a profound sense of the
justice that is in things. Destiny who had brought him to this
deceitful place owed him compensation for the fraud, and an apology
in person was really no more than his due. What if Miss Tancred were
she, the supremely feminine, Destiny herself?

Under the echoing gallery the drawing-room had opened and closed
upon her, and he had followed, his nerves tingling with the familiar
prophetic thrill.

And this was Miss Tancred?

To begin with, he had never seen a woman more execrably dressed. No
doubt it is the first duty of a woman's gown to clothe her, but
apparently Miss Tancred's gown had a Puritan conscience, an almost
morbid sense of its duty. It more t