grey eyes and flushed cheeks who sat
opposite to him at the table. She said nothing, but she looked at him,
and the beauty of her intoxicated him, and the smile of her found an
answer on his own lips. She ate nothing, nor did the waiter see her; so
far as the waiter was concerned, there was an empty chair, but Hugh
Alston saw her.

"Why," he asked, "why can you look like that, and yet be so different?
That look in your eyes makes you the most beautiful and wonderful thing
in this world, and yet..."

He laughed softly to himself. He was uttering his thoughts aloud, and
the unromantic waiter stared at him.

"Beg your pardon, sir?" he asked.

"That's all right!" Hugh said. "What won the three-thirty?"

"I don't think there was any racing to-day, sir," the man said.

He went away, not completely satisfied as to this visitor's sanity, and
Hugh drifted back into dreams and memories.

"You are very wonderful," he said to himself, "yet you made me very
angry; you hurt me and made me furious. I called you ungenerous, and I
meant it, and so you were. Yet when you look at me with your eyes like
that and the colour in your cheeks, I can't find one word to say against
you."

He went to the theatre that night. It was a successful play. All London
was talking of it, but Hugh Alston never remembered what it was about.
He was thinking of a girl with cold disdainful looks that changed
suddenly to softness and tenderness. She sat beside him as she had sat
opposite to him at dinner. On the stage the actors talked meaningless
stuff; nothing was real, save this girl beside him.

"What's the matter with you, my good fellow, is," Hugh said to himself,
as he walked back to the hotel that night, "you're a fickle man; you
don't know your own mind. A week ago you were dreaming of Marjorie; you
considered blue eyes the most beautiful thing in the world. You would
not have listened to the claims of eyes of any other colour, and
now--Bless her dear little heart, she'll be happy as the day is long
with Tom Arundel, with his nice fair hair parted down the middle, and
her pretty scented notepaper. Of course she'll be happy. She would have
been miserable at Hurst Dormer, and so should I have been; seeing her
miserable, I should have been miserable myself. But I shall go back to
Hurst Dormer to-morrow and start on that renovation work. It will give
me something to occupy my time and attention."

That night, much to his surprise, Hugh found he