avison looked up from some treasure of Greek art. The
conversation was perfunctory, every one's curiosity waiting on Mildred
and the crystal.

"Don't you see anything yet, Mrs. Stewart?" asked Miss Ormond at length,
impatiently.

"No," replied Mildred, hesitatingly. "At least, not exactly. I see
something like rushing water and foam."

"The reflection of clouds overhead," pronounced the Under-Secretary,
dogmatically, glancing upward.

"I'm sure it's nothing of the kind," asserted Miss Ormond. "Please go on
looking, Mrs. Stewart, and perhaps you'll see a water-spirit."

"Why do you want her to see a water-spirit?" asked Davison, ironically.
"In all countries of the world they are reckoned spiteful, treacherous
creatures. I was once bitten by one severely, and I have never wanted to
see one since."

"Oh, Mr. Davison! Are you serious? What do you mean?" questioned Miss
Ormond.

Mrs. Stewart hastily put down the crystal. "I don't want to see one,"
she said; "I'm afraid it might bring me bad luck, and, besides, I can't
wait for it, I've got several calls to make before I go home, and I
think there's a storm coming." She shivered. "I'm quite cold."

Miss Ormond said that must be the effect of the crystal, as the
afternoon was still oppressively hot.

Goring caught up with Mrs. Stewart in the gravel drive outside the house
and walked through Kensington Gardens with her. It seemed to them both
quite natural that they should be walking together, and their talk was
in the vein of old friends who have met after a long separation rather
than in that of new acquaintances. When he left her and turned to walk
across Hyde Park towards Westminster, he examined his impressions and
perceived that he was in a state of mind foreign to his nature, and
therefore the butt of his ridicule; a state in which, if he and Mrs.
Stewart had been unmarried persons, he would have said to himself, "That
is the woman I shall marry." It would not have been a passion or an
emotion that would have made him say that; it would have been a
conviction. As it was, the thing was absurd. Cochrane had told him, half
in jest, that Mrs. Stewart was a breaker of hearts, but had not hinted
that her own was on the market. Her appearance made it surely an
interesting question whether she had a heart at all.

And for himself? He hated to think of his marriage, because he
recognized in it the fatal "little spot" in the yet ungarnered fruit of
his life. He was o