altogether make
it up with him before to-morrow evening, I shall believe you to be
utterly heartless. Had I been you I should have been in his arms
before this. I'll go now, and leave you to lie awake, as you say
you will." Then she left the room, but returned in a moment to ask
another question. "What is Plantagenet to say to him about seeing you
to-morrow? Of course he has asked permission to come and call."

"He may come if he pleases. You don't think I have quarrelled with
him, or would refuse to see him!"

"And may we ask him to dine with us?"

"Oh, yes."

"And make up a picnic, and all the rest of it. In fact, he is to
be regarded as only an ordinary person. Well;--good night. I don't
understand you, that's all."

It may be doubted whether Alice understood herself. As soon as her
friend was gone, she put out her candle and seated herself at the
open window of her room, looking out upon the moonlight as it played
upon the lake. Would he be there, thinking of her, looking up,
perhaps, as Glencora had hinted, to see if he could distinguish her
light among the hundred that would be flickering across the long
front of the house. If it were so, at any rate he should not see her,
so she drew the curtain, and sat there watching the lake. It was
a pity that he should have come, and yet she loved him dearly for
coming. It was a pity that he should have come, as his coming could
lead to no good result. Of this she assured herself over and over
again, and yet she hardly knew why she was so sure of it. Glencora
had called her hard; but her conviction on that matter had not come
from hardness. Now that she was alone, her heart was full of love, of
the soft romance of love towards this man; and yet she felt that she
ought not to marry him, even though he might still be willing to take
her. That he was still willing to take her, that he desired to have
her for his wife in spite of all the injury she had done him, there
could be no doubt. Why else had he followed her to Switzerland? And
she remembered, now at this moment, how he had told her at Cheltenham
that he would never consider her to be lost to him, unless she
should, in truth, become the wife of another man. Why, then, should
it not be as he wished it?

She asked herself the question, and did not answer it; but still she
felt that it might not be so. She had no right to such happiness
after the evil that she had done. She had been driven by a frenzy to
do that wh