ity. "That's the sort of little trap she used to lay for
me."

"I suppose you mean she was rotting me. I always know when other
people are rotting. But that's the worst of her; you never can tell,
and she makes you look so ignorant, doesn't she?"

"She makes me _feel_ ignorant, but that's another thing."

"But whatever did she mean just now?"

"Just now she meant that you knew all about _Metropolis_."

"Why should I? Do _you_ know anything about it?"

"Not much; though it is my cousin's paper. But as Mr. Rickman writes
for it, you see--"

"Well, how was I to know that? He's always writing for something; and
he'd never think of coming to _me_ every time. I never talk shop to
him, and he never talks shop to me. Of course he told me that he'd got
on to some better paying thing," she added, anxious to show that she
was not shut out from the secrets of his heart; "but when you said
_Metropolis_ I didn't take it in."

Lucia made no further attempt to converse. She said good-night and
followed Sophie Roots to her tiny room.

"That was rather dreadful," she said to herself. "I wonder--" But if
she did not linger long over her wondering neither did she stop to
find out why she was so passionately anxious to think well of the
woman who was to be Keith Rickman's wife, and why it was such a relief
to her to be angry with Sophie for teasing the poor child.

CHAPTER LV

He asked himself how it was that he had had no premonition of the
thing that was about to happen to him; that the supreme moment should
have come upon him so casually and with so light a step; that he went
to meet it in a mood so commonplace and unprepared? (Good Heavens! He
remembered that he had been eating pea soup at the time, and wishing
it were artichoke.)

Had he not known that she would come back again, and in just that way?
Had he not looked for her coming five years ago? And what were five
years, after all? How was it that he had heard no summons of the
golden and reverberant hour?

And what was he going to do with it, or it with him, now that it had
come? That was a question that he preferred to leave unanswered for
the present.

It seemed that Lucia was going to stay for a week as Miss Roots'
guest; and it was Mrs. Downey's hope that she would be with them for a
much longer period on her own account. This hope Rickman judged to be
altogether baseless; she would never be able to bear the place for
more than a week. He inquired of