the note. He could have smiled at its
abruptness--so like what he already knew of Cynthia West.

"Why didn't you come round in the interval and let me thank you? If I
have been successful, it is all owing to you. Please come to see us this
evening if you can; I want very much to consult you. You know my
address. Madame won't let me stay now. "C. W."

"Impetuous little creature!" Hubert smiled to himself--although Cynthia
was not little.

He thrust the note into his pocket, and went home to dine and dress. He
knew Madame della Scala's ways. This old lady, with whom Cynthia was now
staying, loved to hold a little reception on the evening of the day of
her yearly concert, and she would be delighted to see Mr. Lepel,
although she had not sent him any formal invitation. For Cynthia's sake
he made up his mind to go.

"For Cynthia's sake." How lightly he said the words! In after-days no
words were fraught with deeper and sadder suggestion for him; none bowed
him down more heavily with a sense of obligation and shame and
passionate remorse than these--"For Cynthia's sake."

He went that night to Madame della Scala's house and sat for a full
hour, in a little conservatory lighted with Chinese lanterns, alone with
Cynthia West.

CHAPTER XXIII.

"I don't know how it is," grumbled the General, "but Enid looks scarcely
any better than she did before this precious engagement of hers. You
made me think that she would be perfectly happy if she had her own way;
but I must say, Flossy, that I see no improvement."

Flossy, lying on a sofa and holding a fan over her eyes, as though to
shut out the sight of her husband's bowed shoulders and venerable white
head, answered languidly--

"You forget that you did only half of what you were expected to do. You
would not consent to a definite engagement until she should be eighteen
years old; she is eighteen now, and yet you are holding back. Suspense
of such a sort is very trying to a girl."

The General, who had been standing beside her, sat down in a large
arm-chair and looked very vexed.

"I don't care," he said obstinately--"I'm not going to have my little
girl disposed of in such a hurry! She shall not be engaged to anybody
just yet; and until she is twenty or twenty-one she sha'nt be married.
Why, she's had no girlhood at all! She's only just out of the schoolroom
now. Eighteen is nothing!"

"Waiting and uncertainty are bad for a girl's spirits," said Mrs. Vane.
"Yo