ocked at the door, intending merely to give the mare a gallop if he
should find her in to-day.

He gave his name, and was shown at once up into Lady Ongar's
drawing-room. Lady Ongar was not there, but she soon came down, and
entered the room with a smile on her face and with an outstretched hand.
Between the man-servant who took the captain's name, and the
maid-servant who carried it up to her mistress, but who did not see the
gentleman before she did so, there had arisen some mistake; and Lady
Ongar, as she came down from her chamber above, expected that she was to
meet another man. Harry Clavering, she thought, had come to her at last.
"I'll be down at once," Lady Ongar had said, dismissing the girl, and
then standing for a moment before her mirror as she smoothed her hair,
obliterated, as far as it might be possible, the ugliness of her cap,
and shook out the folds of her dress. A countess, a widow, a woman of
the world who had seen enough to make her composed under all
circumstances, one would say--a trained mare, as Doodles had called
her--she stood before her glass, doubting and trembling like a girl,
when she heard that Harry Clavering was waiting for her below. We may
surmise that she would have spared herself some of this trouble had she
known the real name of her visitor. Then, as she came slowly down the
stairs, she reflected how she would receive him. He had stayed away from
her, and she would be cold to him--cold and formal as she had been on
the railway platform. She knew well how to play that part. Yes, it was
his turn now to show some eagerness of friendship, if there was ever to
be anything more than friendship between them. But she changed all this
as she put her hand upon the look of the door. She would be honest to
him--honest and true. She was, in truth, glad to see him, and he should
know it. What cared she now for the common ways of women and the usual
coyness of feminine coquetry? She told herself also, in language
somewhat differing from that which Doodles had used, that her filly days
were gone by, and that she was now a trained mare. All this passed
through her mind as her hand was on the door, and then she opened it,
with a smiling face and ready hand, to find herself in the presence
of--Captain Archie Clavering.

The captain was sharp-sighted enough to observe the change in her
manner. The change, indeed, was visible enough, and was such that it at
once knocked out of Archie's breast some p