ntical with her own. So she smiled
upon Croll, and whispered to him; and when she had given Croll two
glasses of Curacao,--which comforter she kept in her own hands, as
safeguarded almost as the jewels,--then Croll understood her.

But it was essential that she should know what Marie intended to do.
Marie was anything but communicative, and certainly was not in any way
submissive. 'My dear,' she said one day, asking the question in
French, without any preface or apology, 'are you going to be married
to Mr Fisker?'

'What makes you ask that?'

'It is so important I should know. Where am I to live? What am I to
do? What money shall I have? Who will be a friend to me? A woman ought
to know. You will marry Fisker if you like him. Why cannot you tell
me?'

'Because I do not know. When I know I will tell you. If you go on
asking me till to-morrow morning I can say no more.'

And this was true. She did not know. It certainly was not Fisker's
fault that she should still be in the dark as to her own destiny, for
he had asked her often enough, and had pressed his suit with all his
eloquence. But Marie had now been wooed so often that she felt the
importance of the step which was suggested to her. The romance of the
thing was with her a good deal worn, and the material view of
matrimony had also been damaged in her sight. She had fallen in love
with Sir Felix Carbury, and had assured herself over and over again
that she worshipped the very ground on which he stood. But she had
taught herself this business of falling in love as a lesson, rather
than felt it. After her father's first attempts to marry her to this
and that suitor because of her wealth,--attempts which she had hardly
opposed amidst the consternation and glitter of the world to which she
was suddenly introduced,--she had learned from novels that it would be
right that she should be in love, and she had chosen Sir Felix as her
idol. The reader knows what had been the end of that episode in her
life. She certainly was not now in love with Sir Felix Carbury. Then
she had as it were relapsed into the hands of Lord Nidderdale,--one of
her early suitors,--and had felt that as love was not to prevail, and
as it would be well that she should marry some one, he might probably
be as good as any other, and certainly better than many others. She
had almost learned to like Lord Nidderdale and to believe that he
liked her, when the tragedy came. Lord Nidderdale had been very