een, and still at school in Brighton
somewhere--'You can afford to wait,--give me a chance!' And she looked
down at the water--we were 'on the bonnie banks of Loch Lomond,' as the
song says--in quite a picturesque little attitude of reflection, and
sighed ever so prettily, and said--'I can't, Angus! You're very nice and
kind!--and I like you very much!--but I am going to marry a
millionaire!' Now you know why I hate millionaires."

"Did you say her name was Lucy?" asked Helmsley.

"Yes. Lucy Sorrel."

A bright flame leaped up in the fire and showed all three faces to one
another--Mary's face, with its quietly absorbed expression of attentive
interest--Reay's strongly moulded features, just now somewhat sternly
shadowed by bitter memories--and Helmsley's thin, worn, delicately
intellectual countenance, which in the brilliant rosy light flung upon
it by the fire-glow, was like a fine waxen mask, impenetrable in its
unmoved austerity and calm. Not so much as the faintest flicker of
emotion crossed it at the mention of the name of the woman he knew so
well,--the surprise he felt inwardly was not apparent outwardly, and he
heard the remainder of Reay's narration with the most perfectly
controlled imperturbability of demeanour.

"She told me then," proceeded Reay--"that her parents had spent nearly
all they had upon her education, in order to fit her for a position as
the wife of a rich man--and that she would have to do her best to
'catch'--that's the way she put it--to 'catch' this rich man as soon as
she got a good opportunity. He was quite an old man, she said--old
enough to be her grandfather. And when I asked her how she could
reconcile it to her conscience to marry such a hoary-headed rascal----"

Here Helmsley interrupted him.

"Was he a hoary-headed rascal?"

"He must have been," replied Angus, warmly--"Don't you see he must?"

Helmsley smiled.

"Well--not exactly!" he submitted, with a gentle air of deference--"I
think--perhaps--he might deserve a little pity for having to be 'caught'
as you say just for his money's sake."

"Not a bit of it!" declared Reay--"Any old man who would marry a young
girl like that condemns himself as a villain. An out-an-out,
golden-dusted villain!"

"But _has_ he married her?" asked Mary.

Angus was rather taken aback at this question,--and rubbed his forehead
perplexedly.

"Well, no, he hasn't--not yet--not that I know of, and I've watched the
papers carefully too. Such