It did not enter for a moment into her
calculations that he could be absent on this first night of her return
beyond that hour. When the eleven musical strokes sounded on the little
clock, and were echoed in many deeper booms from without, she got up,
and opening the drawing-room door, stepped out into the little hall.

Footsteps kept passing and passing in the street. Cabs kept rolling up
to other doors and rolling away again. Jasper must surely arrive at any
moment.

Hilda softly opened the hall door, and standing on the steps, looked up
and down the gas-lit street. If Jasper were walking home he would see
her. The lamp light from within threw her slim figure into strong
relief. A man passing by stopped for an instant to look at her.

Hilda shut the hall door hastily in fear and distress. The man had
looked as if he might say something rude. She returned to her little
drawing room, and sitting down by the dying fire stared fixedly into its
embers until her eyes were full of tears.

Between twelve and one Quentyns let himself softly into the house with
his latch-key. He was immediately attracted by the light in the drawing
room, the door of which was slightly ajar. He came into the room at
once, to find Hilda lying back in her easy-chair, fast asleep. She was
looking pale--all her pretty roses had fled. Quentyns' first impulse was
to fold her in his arms in an embrace of absolute love and
reconciliation.

What a pity it is that we don't oftener yield to our first impulses,
for they are as a rule whispered to us by our good angels.

Quentyns bent forward, and lightly, very lightly, touched the sleeper's
soft hair with his big hand. That touch was a caress, but it startled
Hilda, who woke up with a cry.

"Oh, Jasper," she said, looking at him with alarm in her eyes, "you--you
are home! I didn't mean to go to sleep, and--what is it, Jasper?"

"Kiss me, Hilda; I am glad you have returned," said Quentyns. "But
another night, if I should happen to be late, you must not sit up for
me--I hate being waited for."

CHAPTER XIV.

THE LITTLE RIFT.

No backward path; ah! no returning;
No second crossing that ripple's flow:
Come to me now for the mist is burning:
Come ere it darkens; Ah, no; ah, no!

--JEAN INGELOW.

Jasper Quentyns was quite certain that he was behaving admirably under
circumstances of a specially trying nature.

Judy's advent in the house gave him