uld he
reconcile the fact with her education at St. Alban's, her friendship
with such exalted families, her relationship to an officer of evident
birth and position? When he thought thus, he acknowledged the
impossibility; but then no sooner had he acknowledged it than his
heart passionately denied the deduction, with the simple iteration,
"It is Aspatria! It is Aspatria!"

Aspatria or not, he told himself that he was at last genuinely in
love. Every affair before was tame, pale, uninteresting. If it was not
Aspatria, then the first Aspatria was the shadow of the second and
real one; the preface to love's glorious tale; the prelude to his
song; the gray, sweet dawn to his perfect day. He could not eat, nor
sit still, nor think reasonably, nor yet stop thinking. The sun stood
still; the minutes were hours; at four o'clock he wished to fling the
timepiece out of the window.

Aspatria had the immense strength of certainty. She knew. Also, she
had Sarah to advise with. Still better, she had the conviction that
Ulfar loved her. Perhaps Sarah had exaggerated Ulfar's desperate
condition; if so, she had done it consciously, for she knew that as
soon as a woman is sure of her power she puts on an authority which
commands it. She was now only afraid that Ulfar would not be kept in
suspense long enough, that Aspatria would forgive him too easily.

"Do make yourself as puzzling as you can, for this one night,
Aspatria," she urged. "Try to outvie and outdo and even affront that
dove-like simplicity he used to adore in you, and into which you are
still apt to relapse. He told me once that you looked like a Quakeress
when he first saw you."

"I was just home from Miss Gilpin's school in Kendal. It was a Quaker
school. I have always kept a black gown ready, like the one he saw me
first in."

"No black gown to-night. I have a mind to stay here and see that you
turn the Quakeress into a princess."

"I will do all you wish. To-night you shall have your way; but poor
Ulfar must have suffered, and--"

"Poor Ulfar, indeed! Be merry; that is the best armour against love.
What ruins women? Revery and sentimentality. A woman who does not
laugh ought to be watched."

But though she lectured and advised Aspatria as to the ways of men and
the ways of love, Sarah had not much faith in her own counsels. "No
one can draw out a programme for a woman's happiness," she mused; "she
will not keep to its lines. Now, I do wonder whether she will