grow modest. Why, even I, a man, can see her
in my mind's eye, with a freckled complexion (he hates freckles), and a
frightened gasp between each word, and a wholesome horror of wine, and
a general air of hoping the earth will open presently to swallow her
up."

"But how if she is totally different from all this?"

"She won't be different. Her father was a wild Irishman. Besides, I
have seen her sort over and over again, and it is positive cruelty to
animals to drag the poor creatures from their dull homes into the very
centre of life and gayety. They never can make up their minds whether
the butler that announces dinner is or is not the latest arrival; and
they invariably say, 'No, thank you,' when asked to have anything. To
them the fish-knife is a thing unknown and afternoon tea the wildest
dissipation."

"Well, I can only hope and trust she will turn out just what you say,"
says Marcia, laughing.

Four days later, meeting her on his way to the stables, he throws her a
letter from his solicitor.

"It is all right," he says, and goes on a step or two, as though
hurried, while she hastily runs her eyes over it.

"Well, and now your mind is at rest," she calls after him, as she sees
the distance widening between them.

"For the present, yes."

"Well, here, take your letter."

"Tear it up; I don't want it," he returns, and disappears round the
angle of the house.

Her fingers form themselves as though about to obey him and tear the
note in two. Then she pauses.

"He may want it," she says to herself, hesitating. "Business letters
are sometimes useful afterward. I will keep it for him."

She slips it into her pocket, and for the time being thinks no more of
it. That night, as she undresses, finding it again, she throws it
carelessly into a drawer, where it lies for many days forgotten.

* * * * *

It is the twentieth of August: in seven days more the "little country
girl with freckles and a snub nose" will be at Herst Royal, longing
"for the earth to open and swallow her up."

To Philip her coming is a matter of the most perfect indifference. To
Marcia it is an event,--and an unpleasant one.

When, some three years previously, Marcia Amherst consented to leave
the mother she so sincerely loved to tend an old and odious man, she
did so at his request and with her mother's full sanction, through
desire of the gold that was to be (it was tacitly understood) the
r