ements. He hesitated when the porter asked him what he should do with
his luggage, and gave an order which he afterwards contradicted.

"No," he said, "I won't do that. Put my things on a cab. All right!
Drive to No.--Russell Square."

This was his home-address; but, when there, he did not go up-stairs. He
told his landlady to send his things to his room, and not to expect him
back to dinner, as he meant to dine at his club.

He did so; but after dinner his fitful hesitancy seemed to revive. He
smoked a cigarette, talked a little to one of his friends, then went out
slowly and, as it seemed, indecisively into the street, and called a
hansom-cab. Then his indecision seemed to leave him. He jumped in,
shouted an address to the driver, and was driven on to a quiet square in
Kensington, where he knocked at the door of a tall narrow house, only
noticeable in the daytime by reason of the masses of flowers in the
balcony, and at night by the rose-colored blinds, illuminated by the
light of a lamp, in the drawing-room windows.

The servant who opened the door welcomed him with a smile, as if his
face was well known to her. He passed her with a word of explanation,
and marched up-stairs to the first-floor, where he tapped lightly at the
drawing-room door, and then, without waiting, walked into the room.

A girl in a red dress, who had been kneeling on the rug before the fire,
rose to her feet as he came in and uttered a blithesome greeting.

"At last!" she said. "So here you are, monsieur! I was wondering what
had become of you, and thought you had deserted me altogether!"

"Could I do that?" said Hubert, in a tone in which mock gallantry was
strangely mingled with a tenderness which was altogether passionate and
earnest. "Do you really think that I ever could do that?"

The girl he spoke to was Cynthia West.

CHAPTER XXVI.

Cynthia West made a delightful picture as she stood in the glow of the
firelight and the rose-shaded lamps. Her dress, of deep red Indian silk,
partly covered with puffings of soft-looking net of the same shade, was
cut low, to show her beautiful neck and throat; the sleeves were very
narrow, so that the whole length of her finely-shaped arm could be seen.
Her dusky hair gave her all the stateliness of a coronet; swept away
from her neck to the top of her head, it left only a few stray curls to
shadow with bewitching lightness and vagueness the smooth surface of the
exquisite nape. What was