h I had cut
that sugar prince story out; _I_ can't tell the child anything about
it. Langton, too--wonder if it's any relation to my Langton--sister of
his, perhaps--_he_ lives at Notting Hill somewhere. Well, I won't
write; if I do I shall put my foot in it somehow.... It's quite likely
that Vincent knew this child. She can't be seriously unhappy about
such a piece of nonsense, and if she is, it's not _my_ fault.'

Mark had never quite lost the memory of that morning in the fog, his
brief meeting with Mabel, and the untimely parting by the hedge.
Subsequent events had naturally done something to efface the
impression which her charm and grace had made upon him then; but even
yet he saw her face at times as clearly as ever, and suffered once
more the dull pain he had felt when he first knew that she had gone
from him without leaving him the faintest hope of being ever
privileged to know her more intimately or even see her again.

Sometimes, when he dreamed most wildly of the brilliant future that
was to come to him, he saw himself, as the author of several famous
and successful works (amongst which 'Illusion' was entirely obscured),
meeting her once more, and marking his sense of her past ingratitude
by a studied coldness. But this was a possibility that never, even in
his most sanguine moments, was other than remote.

If he had but known it, there had long been close at hand--in the
shape of young Langton--a means which, judiciously managed, might have
brought that part of his dream to pass immediately, and now he had
that which would realise it even more surely and effectually.

But he did not know, and let the appeal lie unanswered that was due to
Mabel's suggestion--'the moral of which,' as Alice's Duchess might
say, is that one should never neglect a child's letter.

CHAPTER XIII.

A 'THORN AND FLOWER PIECE.'

'Illusion' had not been very long published before Mark began to have
uncomfortable anticipations that it might be on the way to achieve an
unexpected success, and he was nearer the truth in this than he
himself believed as yet. It might not become popular in the wider and
coarser sense of the word, being somewhat over the heads of the large
class who read fiction for the 'story;' it might never find its way to
railway bookstalls (though even this, as will appear, befell it in
time,) or be considered a profitable subject for Transatlantic piracy;
but it was already gaining recognition as a boo