The Well-Beloved

. How that chestnut hair of hers had shone: it required no tiara to set it off, like that of the dowager he had seen there, who had put t

had hastily asked him to dinner for the day after the morrow, stating in the honest way he knew so well that she had heard he was out of town, or she would have asked him two or three weeks ago. Now, of all social things that Pierston liked it was to be a

r's company. When, shortly after eleven, he came away, he felt almost certain that within those luminous grey eyes the One of his eternal fidelity had verily taken lodgings-and for a long lease. But this was not all. At parting, he had, almost invol

as he

in constant dread lest he should wrong some woman twice as good as himself by seeming to mean what he fain would mean but could not, how useless he was likely to be for practical steps towards householding, though he was all the while pining for domestic li

ll immediately on t

ither with expectations of having a highly emotional time, at least. But somehow

n arm-chair, in the far distance, a lady whom he journeyed across the carpet to reach, and ultimately did reach. To be sure it was Mrs. Nichola Pine-Avon, but frosted over indescribably. Raising her eyes in a slightl

hola, and he felt sick and almost resentful. But happily his affection was incipient as yet, and a sudden sense of the ridiculous in his own

side. The tune was a rollicking air he had heard at some music-hall;

n't!' she

he Jilt's Hornpipe." Just as they turn Madeira into port in the space of a single night, so this

dee

going much to the music-hall

es

s is often done, wi

decorated with greenish-blue satin up to the height of a person's head-an arrangement that somewhat

ars,' she observed complacently,

el lonely in

nev

ree opportune young ladies she seemed regretful. She asked him to come again; and he thought he would te

'What an uncivil thing to sa

civil. Good-bye,

ld. 'Now what the devil this means I cannot tell,' he said to himself, reflecting sto

t interesting man was that, with his lovely head of ha

yn Pie

t how much his experiences had dictated his statuary, and I discovered them by seeing in a Jersey paper of the marriage of a person supposed to be his wife,

ith a start. 'Why, I heard only yesterday that h

he young lady. 'How I wis

ittle during the next few days, but about a week later he kept an engagement to dine with La

ng-room, and when he was shown in there stood alone in the lamplight Nichola Pine-Avon. She had been the first arrival. He had n

ot the heart to be other than friendly. As the other guests dropped in, the pair retreated i

n suddenly it dawned upon him that her previous manner must have originated in some false report about Marcia, of whose existence he had not heard for years. Anyho

Pine-Avon herself distinctly made advances. He re-admired her, while at the same time her conduct in her own house had been enough to check his confidence-enough even to ma

e felt there an unopened letter, which had arrived at the moment he was leaving his house, and he had slipped into his coat to read in the cab as he drove along. Pierston drew it suff

articular spring, flies open and reveals its works. The spring in the present case was the artistic commendation she deserved and craved. At this particular moment she was engaged with the man on her own right, a representative of Family, who talked positively and hollowly, as if shouting down a vista of five hundred years from t

her son, whom she begged Jocelyn to recommend as candidate for some post in to

is dead. She married her cousin, if you do mind, and went away from here for a good-few years, but was