th, with an arm round her waist. They looked together at
the lake.

"It is Lord Plowden, is it not?" asked the American, as the silence grew
constrained.

Lady Cressage looked up alertly, and then hesitated over her reply.
"No," she said at last. Upon reflection, and with a dim smile flickering
in her side-long glance at Celia, she added, "He wants to marry you, you
know."

"Leave that out of consideration," said Celia, composedly. "He has never
said so. I think it was more his mother's idea than his, if it existed
at all. Of course I am not marrying him, or anybody else. But I saw at
Hadlow that you and he were--what shall I say?--old friends."

"He must marry money," the other replied. In an unexpected burst of
candour she went on: "He would have asked me to marry him if I had
had money. There is no harm in telling you that. It was quite
understood--oh, two years ago. And I think I wished I had the
money--then."

"And you don't wish it now?"

A slight shake of Edith's small, shapely head served for answer. After
a little, she spoke in a musing tone: "He is going to have money of his
own, very soon, but I don't think it would attract me now. I like him
personally, of course, but--there is no career, no ambition, no future."

"A Viscount has future enough behind him," observed Celia.

"It doesn't attract me," the other repeated, vaguely. "He is handsome,
and clever, and kind and all that--but he would never appeal to any of
the great emotions--nor be capable of them himself He is too smooth, too
well-balanced, too much the gentleman. That expresses it badly--but do
you see what I mean?"

Celia turned, and studied the beautiful profile beside her, in a steady,
comprehending look.

"Yes, I think I see what you mean," she said, with significance in her
tone.

Lady Cressage flushed, and released herself from her companion's arm.
"But I don't know myself what I mean!" she exclaimed, despairingly, as
she moved away. "I don't know!--I don't know!"

CHAPTER XIV

ON the last day of February, Mrs. Dabney was surprised if not
exhilarated by a visit from her two children in the little book-shop.

"It's the last day in the world that I should have thought you'd 'a'
come out on," she told them, in salutation--and for comment they all
glanced along the dark narrow alley of shelves to the street window. A
gloomy spectacle it was indeed, with a cold rain slanting through the
discredited remnants of a fog, whic