poverty. An intelligent foreigner has inquired whether there are any
single elderly ladies left in England, so innumerable are the hosts
abroad. Some, like her, had worn their personalities so thin that it
seemed likely they would eventually become shadows with no character
left; others were nice and cheerful, and made little encampments in the
wilderness, so that the unfortunates might gather round them, and almost
feel they had got a home.

It was in the room of a nice one that Henrietta met a Colonel. There are
fewer occupationless Englishmen abroad, but there is a fair
supply--half-pay officers, consumptives, and mysterious creatures, who
have no good reason for being there. They were a strange medley for
Henrietta to associate with, people whom in her palmy days, as mistress
of her father's house, she would have thought unspeakable. She had none
of this generation's tolerance and love of new sensations to attract her
to unsatisfactory people. She only really liked conventional
respectability.

This Colonel was not respectable. He was not a Colonel in the English
army, and never would say much about himself. He was very pleasant and
polite, and Henrietta, as she walked back to table d'hote, felt she had
spent a livelier afternoon than usual. It was at the beginning of the
season, and looking back six weeks later she was astonished to find how
often they had met.

Shortly after, the lady in whose room Henrietta had first seen him,
asked her to tea. She did not seem quite so easy-going as usual, and at
last began: "You know, Miss Symons, my cousin, Colonel Hilton, is rather
a peculiar man. I've known him all my life, and I don't think there is
any harm in him, but money is his difficulty. He ought to be well off,
but it always seems to slip through his fingers."

Henrietta realized that this was a warning.

At the end of the season he proposed and she accepted him. She knew he
proposed for her money, and she knew that, besides being mercenary, he
was a poor creature in every way. Most people could not have borne long
with his society, but she, unaccustomed to companionship, felt that he
sufficed her. She did not think much of the future. When she did, she
realized that it was hardly possible they could marry. But meanwhile it
was something--she would have been ashamed to own how much--to have
someone call her "dear." Once he attained to "dearest," but he was
evidently frightened at his temerity, and did not rep