it made, disconcertingly, a sceptic. It was the absolute perfection of the handsome; but things had a way of coming into it. 'I felt,' he said, 'that you were there together at a point at which you had a right to the ease that the absence of a listener would give. I reflected that when you made me promise to stay you hadn't guessed—'

That he could possibly have come to me on such an extraordinary errand? No, of course I hadn't guessed-who would? But didn't you see how little I was upset by it?'

Sutton hesitated; then with a smile: 'I think he saw how little.'

You yourself didn't then?'

He again held back, but not, after all, to answer. 'He was wonderful-wasn't he?'

'I think he was,' she replied after a moment. To which she added: 'Why did he pretend that way he knew you?'

'He didn't pretend. He felt on the spot as if we were friends.' Sutton had found this afterwards and found truth in it. It was an effusion of cheer and hope. He was so glad to see me there and to find you happy.'

in.'

'Happy?'

'Happy. Aren't you?'

،

'Because of you?'

Well-according to the impression he received as he came

That was sudden then,' she asked, 'and unexpected?' Her companion thought. 'Prepared in some degree, but confirmed by the sight of us, there together, so sociable over your fire.'

Mrs. Grantham turned this round. 'If he knew I was "happy" then-which, by the way, is none of his business, nor of yours either-why in the world did he come?'

'Well, for good manners. And for his idea,' said Sutton.

She took it in, appearing to have no hardness of rancour that could bar discussion. 'Do you mean by his idea his proposal that I should godmother his wife?-and, if you do, is the proposal your reason for calling him wonderful?'

Sutton laughed. 'Pray, what's yours?' As this was a question, however, that she took her time to answer or not to answeronly appearing interested for a moment in a combination that had formed itself on the other side of the room-he presently went on: 'What's his?-that would seem to be the point; his, I mean, for having decided on the extraordinary step of throwing his little wife, bound hands and feet, into your arms. Intelligent as you are, and with these three or four hours to have thought it over, I yet don't see how that can fail still to mystify you.'

She continued to watch their opposite neighbours. "Little," you call her. Is she so very small?'

'Tiny, tiny-she must be; as different as possible in every way-of necessity from you. They always are the opposite pole, you know,' said Shirley Sutton.

She glanced at him now.

impudence!'

'You strike me as of an

'No, no; I only like to make it out with you.'

'I'm sure

She looked away again and after a little went on. she's charming, and only hope one isn't to gather that he's already tired of her.'

'Not a bit! He's tremendously in love, and he'll remain so.' 'So much the better. And if it's a question,' said Mrs. Grantham, 'of one's doing what one can for her, he has only, as I told him when you had gone, to give me the chance.'

'Good! So he is to commit her to you?'

'You use extraordinary expressions, but it's settled that he brings her.'

'And you'll really help her?'

'Really?' said Mrs. Grantham with her eyes again upon him. Why not? For what do you take me?'

'Ah, isn't that just what I still have the discomfort, every day I live, of asking myself?'

She had made, as she spoke, a movement to rise, which, as if she were tired of his tone, his last words appeared to determine. But, also getting up, he held her, when they were on their feet, long enough to hear the rest of what he had to say. If you do help her, you know, you'll show him that you've understood.'

'Understood what?'

'Why, his idea-the deep, acute train of reasoning that has led him to take, as one may say, the bull by the horns; to reflect that, as you might, as you probably would, in any case, get at her, he plays the wise game, as well as the bold one, by assuming your generosity and placing himself publicly under an obligation to you.'

Mrs, Grantham showed not only that she had listened, but

that she had for an instant considered. What is it you elegantly

describe as my getting "at" her?'

'He takes his risk, but puts you, you see, on your honour.' She thought a moment more. 'What profundities indeed then over the simplest of matters! And if your idea is,' she went on, 'that if I do help her I shall show him I've understood them, so it will be that if I don't'

'You'll show him'-Sutton took her up 'that you haven't? Precisely. But in spite of not wanting to appear to have understood too much'

'I may still be depended on to do what I can? Quite certainly. You'll see what I may still be depended on to do.' And she moved away.

III.

It was not, doubtless, that there had been anything in their rather sharp separation at that moment to sustain or prolong the interruption; yet it definitely befell that, circumstances aiding, they practically failed to meet again before the great party at Burbeck. This occasion was to gather in some thirty persons from a certain Friday to the following Monday, and it was on the Friday that Sutton went down. He had known in advance that Mrs. Grantham was to be there, and this perhaps, during the interval of hindrance, had helped him a little to be patient. He had before him the certitude of a real full cup-two days brimming over with the sight of her. He found, however, on his arrival that she was not yet in the field, and presently learned that her place would be in a small contingent that was to join the party on the morrow. This knowledge he extracted from Miss Banker, who was always the first to present herself at any gathering that was to enjoy her, and whom, moreover-partly on that very account-the wary not less than the speculative were apt to hold themselves well-advised to engage with at as early as possible a stage of the business. She was stout, red, rich, mature, universal -a massive, much-fingered volume, alphabetical, wonderful, indexed, that opened of itself at the right place. She opened for Sutton instinctively at G-which happened to be remarkably convenient. 'What she's really waiting over for is to bring down Lady Gwyther.'

'Ah the Gwythers are coming?'

'Yes-caught, through Mrs. Grantham, just in time. Shell be the feature-every one wants so to see her.'

Speculation and weariness met and combined at this moment in Shirley Sutton. 'Do you mean-a-Mrs. Grantham?'

'Dear, no; poor little Lady Gwyther, who, but just arrived in England, appears now, literally, for the first time in her life in any society whatever, and whom (don't you know the extraordinary story? you ought to, you!) she, of all people, has so wonderfully taken up. It will be quite, here, as if she were " presenting" her."

Sutton of course took in more things than even appeared. I never know what I ought to know-I only know, inveterately, what I oughtn't. So what is the extraordinary story?'

'Really!' he replied without winking.

'It happened indeed but the other day,' said Miss Banker, 'yet every one is already wondering. Gwyther has thrown his wife on her mercy--but I won't believe you if you pretend to me you don't know why he shouldn't.'

Sutton asked himself then what he could pretend. 'Do you mean because she's merciless?'

She hesitated. 'If you don't know, perhaps I oughtn't to tell you.'

He liked Miss Banker and found just the right tone to plead : 'Do tell me.'

،

'Well,' she sighed, it will be your own fault! They had been such friends that there could have been but one name for the crudity of his original procédé. When I was a girl we used to call it jilting. But I refer not so much to the act as to the way-though you may say indeed of course that there is in such cases, after all, only one way. Least said soonest mended!'

Sutton seemed to wonder. 'Oh, he said too much?' 'He said nothing. That was it.'

Sutton kept it up. But was what?'

'Why, what she must, like any woman in her shoes, have felt to be his perfidy. He simply went and did it took to himself this child, that is, without the preliminary of a scandal or a rupture-before she could turn round.'

'I follow you. But it would appear from what you say that she has turned round now.'

Well,' Miss Banker laughed, 'we shall see for ourselves how far. It will be what every one will try to see.'

Oh, then we've work cut out!'-and Sutton certainly felt that he himself had; an impression that lost nothing from a further talk with Miss Banker in the course of a short stroll in the grounds with her the next day. He spoke as one who had now turned over many things.

'Did I understand from you yesterday that Lady Gwyther's a

"child"?'

Nobody knows. It's prodigious, the way she has managed.' 'The way Lady Gwyther has?'

'No; the way May Grantham has kept her till this hour in her pocket.'

،

He was quick at his watch. Do you mean by "this hour" that they're due now?'

'Not till tea. All the others arrive together in time for that.' Miss Banker had clearly, since the previous day, filled in gaps and become, as it were, revised and enlarged. 'She'll have kept a cat from seeing her-so as to produce her entirely herself.'

'Well,' Sutton mused, 'that will have been a very noble sort

of return?'

'For Gwyther's behaviour? Very. Yet I feel creepy.'

'Because so much depends for the girl in the way of the right start or the wrong start-on the signs and omens of this first appearance. It's a great house and a great occasion, and we're assembled there, it strikes me, very much as the Roman mob at the circus used to be to see the next Christian maiden brought out to the tigers.'

'Oh, if she is a Christian maiden - !' Sutton murmured. But he stopped at what his imagination called up.

It perhaps fed that faculty a little that Miss Banker had the effect of making out that Mrs. Grantham might individually be, at any rate, something of a Roman matron. 'She has kept her in the dark so that we may only take her from her hand. She will have formed her for us.'

'In so few days?'

'Well, she will have prepared her; decked her, for the sacrifice, with ribbons and flowers.'

'Ah, if you only mean that she will have taken her to her dressmaker - !' And it came to Sutton, at once as a new light