elt as if the
interview had lasted a fortnight, but fate was kinder to him than he
deserved, and sent relief in the person of the widow occupant of Number
Ten, who arrived to pay an evening call, cribbage-board in hand. Then
Mr Jack departed, and paced up and down the road smoking cigarettes,
and meditating on revenge. He caught the echo of girlish laughter from
within his own threshold, and could easily picture the scene within--the
two sisters huddling over the fire, Sylvia seated in state in the
grandfather chair, Pat, her devoted admirer, perched on the end of a
table, and placidly maintaining his position in spite of repeated
injunctions to run away.

He pictured Sylvia's face also as he had often seen it--the sharply-cut
little features, the suspicion of pride and self-will in aquiline nose
and firmly-moulded chin, the short, roughened hair, which was such a
cross to its owner, but which gave her a gallant, boyish air, which one
spectator at least found irresistibly piquant. He saw the firelight
play upon the pretty pink dress and the rings on the restless hands, saw
the brown eyes sparkle with laughter, and grow suddenly soft and
wistful. It seemed to him that they were turned towards himself, that
her thoughts were meeting his half-way, that she was already repenting,
and dreading the result of her hasty flight.

Jack O'Shaughnessy stopped short in his pacings up and down, and stood
staring before him with a strange, rapt expression. Out there in the
prosaic street the greatest discovery of his life had come to him, and
the wonder of it took away his breath. Young men often imagine
themselves in love with half a dozen pretty faces before they have
reached five-and-twenty, but to most of them there comes at last, in the
providence of God, the one woman who is as far removed from the passing
fancies of an hour as the moon from her attendant stars. She has
appeared, and for him thenceforth there is no more doubt or change; his
life is, humanly speaking, in her hands, and her influence over him is
the greatest of all the talents which has been entrusted to her care.
Too often he is careless about religious matters, if not actively
antagonistic, and her light words may confirm him in a life of
indifference; but, on the other hand, his heart is never so tender and
ready to be influenced as at the moment when she has given her life into
his charge, and this golden opportunity is hers to seize and turn to
lasti