.

'Well,' he said, after a very perceptible pause, 'no doubt your ladyship
has done wisely, and I must submit to your jurisdiction. But I had asked
Lady Lesbia a question, and I had been promised an answer.'

'Your question has been answered by Lady Lesbia. She left a note for
you,' replied Lady Maulevrier.

'Thanks,' answered Mr. Hammond, briefly, and he hurried from the room
without another word.

The letter was on the table in his bedroom. He had little hope of any
good waiting for him in a letter so written. The dowager and the world
had triumphed over a girl's dawning love, no doubt.

This was Lesbia's letter:

'Dear Mr. Hammond,--Lady Maulevrier desires me to say that the
proposal which you honoured me by making this morning is one which I
cannot possibly accept, and that any idea of an engagement between
you and me could result only in misery and humiliation to both. She
thinks it best, under these circumstances, that we should not again
meet, and I shall therefore have left Fellside before you receive
this letter.

'With all good wishes, very faithfully yours,

'LESBIA HASELDEN.'

'Very faithfully mine--faithful to her false training, to the worldly
mind that rules her; faithful to the gods of this world--Belial and
Mammon, and the Moloch Fashion. Poor cowardly soul! She loves me, and
owns as much, yet weakly flies from me, afraid to trust the strong arm
and the brave heart of the man who loves her, preferring the glittering
shams of the world to the reality of true and honest love. Well, child,
I have weighed you in the balance and found you wanting. Would to God it
had been otherwise! If you had been brave and bold for love's sake,
where is that pure and perfect chrysolite for which I would have
bartered you?'

He flung himself into a chair, and sat with his head bowed upon his
folded arms, and his eyes not innocent of tears. What would he not have
given to find truth and courage and scorn of the world's wealth in that
heart which he had tried to win. Did he think her altogether heartless
because she so glibly renounced him? No, he was too just for that. He
called her only half-hearted. She was like the cat in the adage,
'Letting I dare not, wait upon I would.' But he told himself with one
deep sigh of resignation that she was lost to him for ever.

'I have tried her, and found her not worth the winning,' he said.

The house, even the lovely landscape smiling