nt. Let me hear the truth from you. She seems unhappy, uncertain,
nervous. I like her. There is something real, genuine, about her. I
would gladly think, that----Do you know," she leans towards him, "I have
sometimes thought you were in love with her."

"Have you? Do you know, so have I," with a frankness very admirable.
"She is one of the most agreeable girls of my acquaintance. There is
something very special about her. I'm not surprised that both you and I
fell into a conclusion of that sort."

"Am I to understand by that----?"

"Just one thing. I am too poor to marry."

"With that knowledge in your mind, you should not have acted towards her
as you did yesterday. It was a mistake, believe me. You should have come
home alone, or else brought her back as your promised wife."

"Ah! what a delightful vista you open up before me, but what an unkind
one, too," says Mr. Beauclerk, with a little reproachful uplifting of
his hands and brows. "Have you no bowels of compassion? You know how the
charms of domestic life have always attracted me. And to be able to
enjoy them with such an admirable companion as Miss Kavanagh! Are you
soulless, utterly without mercy, Isabel, that you open up to me a
glorious vision such as that merely to taunt and disappoint me?"

"I am neither Joyce nor Miss Maliphant," says Lady Baltimore, with
ill-suppressed contempt. "I wish you would try to remember that, Norman;
it would spare time and trouble. You speak of Joyce as if she were the
woman you love, and yet--would you subject the woman you love to unkind
comment? If you cared you would not have treated her as----"

"Ah, if I did care for her," interrupts he.

"Well, don't you?" sternly.

She has risen, and is looking down at him from the full height of her
tall, slender figure, that now looks taller than usual.

"Oh, immensely!" declares Mr. Beauclerk, airily. "My dear girl, you
can't have studied me not to know that; as I have told you, I think her
charming. Quite out of the common--quite."

"That will do," shortly.

"You condemn me," says he, in an aggrieved tone that has got something
of amused surprise in it. "Yet you know--you of all others--how poor a
devil I am! So poor, that I do not even permit the idea of marriage in
my head."

"Perhaps, however, you have permitted it to enter into hers!" says Lady
Baltimore.

"Oh, my dear Isabel!" with a light laugh and a protesting glance. "Do
you think she would thank you for that