"It certainly does seem a little unreasonable," Mr. Norton remarks mildly.

"And for her to come here just when I want matters between Keith and my niece, Maude Meredith, properly arranged. It is intolerable !" Mrs. Lyster proceeds piteously, her hard, loud voice ascending into a thin, shrill soprano, that is even more grating than her natural tones. can see that Keith has not forgotten her. I fear he never will. Men are more absurdly sentimental than women sometimes—you must know that."

66

Whereupon Mr. Norton winces again, and his face falls a shade, but she is perfectly impervious, full of her own worries. She has no idea of troubling herself about other folk's "morbid feelings," as she styles them.

"And then there is the jealous husband. Who knows what is in prospect-mischief

murder, perhaps !" she whispers, in a low, sepulchral voice.

Mr. Norton says something that is meant to be of a reassuring and consolatory nature, and is not sorry perhaps that at this moment Maude and Ainsworth Harcourt come up, and a moment later Val and Keith Fairfax make their appearance.

263

CHAPTER XI.

THE LOVE OF OTHER DAYS.

"I waive the quantum of the sin
The hazard of concealing;

But oh! it hardens a' within,
And petrifies the feeling."

BURNS.

S soon as Val appears, Mrs. Lyster launches into an emphatic commendation of her dress and looks-a commendation which seems strangely tame in comparison with the admiration which Ainsworth Harcourt's eyes unreservedly express as he fixes them on her, but with a softness that entirely does away with any impertinence in the regard.

"Where have you been hiding yourself?" he asks, in a low voice-a voice that he has grown so accustomed to modulating, whenever he addresses a woman, that it sounds tender if he even says "good day." "I have been looking for you all the evening. Surely you have only just come in ?"

"No," Val answers with a careless laugh, though at heart she feels a little piqued; "I have been here some time-since the beginning of the two first dances, in fact, which I think you were to have had—were you not ?"

She says it so indifferently that she piques him en revanche. Adonis experiences a twinge of mortification, and it evinces itself by a slight accession of colour on his handsome face.

"I am sorry the dances were so uninteresting that you only thought you had promised them to me," he remarks in a low,

reproachful tone, to which she feigns a deaf

ear.

"Did you say you had been looking for me ?" she asks.

"Of course I have!"

"Strange, is it not, how one misses people when one is looking for them, and discovers them when one is not? I was not searching for you, and yet I saw you long ago," she goes on innocently.

"And did not even speak to me-how unkind!"

The words are common-place, but the tone is eloquent, yet it does not deceive the listener. With all her vanity she is not at all wanting in natural intelligence, and is more than a match for him, in spite of the fascination of his perfumed golden curls, his exquisite features, and his ingratiating ways.

"It would rather have been unkind if I

had spoken," she replies; "you were re