ing about it. What is her name?"

"I have made a mistake, I am afraid." Charles was instantly on his guard.
"I am really very sorry--"

She was not altogether proof against the winning smile with which he
tendered an apology, but she looked at him strangely as she accompanied
him downstairs to the front door.

Charles went back to London with a dark and angry face. His anger was
directed against Fate, which had arranged such a fantastic anticlimax for
his cherished hopes. The blow was almost too much for him. He had deceived
himself into thinking that he would find Sisily at Charleswood, and he
felt that he had really lost her. He was now reduced to searching for her
in the great wilderness of London, which seemed a hopeless task.

By the time the train reached Charing Cross he rallied from his fit of
despondency. He refused to despair. Sisily was somewhere in London, at
that moment walking alone among its countless hordes, perhaps thinking of
him. He would find her--he must! Where to commence? She had reached
Paddington only a few nights ago, so that was obviously the logical
starting-point of any inquiries. To Paddington he went, this time in a
taxi-cab.

He had an extraordinary initial piece of luck. Fortune, either regretting
her previous treatment or tantalizing him in feminine fashion with the
expectation of greater favours to come, threw him at the very outset of
his inquiries against the red-headed luggage porter who had spoken with
Sisily on her arrival from Penzance. The porter, leaning against the white
enamelled walls of a Tube passage, pictured the scene with much loquacity,
and a faithful recollection of his own share in the interview. Charles
anxiously asked him if the young lady he had encountered was very
pretty--pale and dark. The porter, with a judicial air, responded that
looks in women was, after all, a matter of taste--what was one man's meat
was another man's poison, as you might say--but this young lady had dark
hair and eyes, and her face hadn't too much colour in it, so far as he
remembered. He apologized for this vagueness of description on the plea
that one girl was very like another to a man who saw them in droves every
day, as he did. But one or two minute particulars of her dress which he
was able to supply convinced Charles that he had seen Sisily. The man
added that as far as he knew the young lady went on to Euston Square,
though he couldn't say he'd actually seen her catch the trai