He put it down upon the table, and made to
Mr. Felton the business-like suggestion that a
doctor had better be sent for, and he had better
be sent to fetch him, which was immediately
acceded to.

When Jim returned, bringing with him a
general practitioner, he was told that Mr. Dallas
had "come to," but was "uncommon weak and
confused, and crying like a child when he wasn't
shivering," so that Jim felt his chances of an
interview were small indeed.

"I can't see him, of course, and I wanted to,
most partic'lar. He brought me in, hisself."

"Yes, yes, I know," said the male domestic,
with importance; "but you can't see him, and
there's no good in your waiting about here.
Look round at eleven to-morrow, and I'll see
what can be done for you."

Jim had nothing for it but to go disconsolately
away. So he went.

While George Dallas and Clare Carruthers
were talking together at Sir Thomas Boldero's
house in Chesham-place, while the hours—never
to be forgotten by either—were passing over
them, the same hours were witnessing an
interview less momentous for Harriet Routh and
her beautiful foe.

Mrs. P. Ireton Bembridge was ready to
receive her visitor; and as her coquetry and vanity
were omnivorous, much as she despised women,
and sincerely as she enjoyed the knowledge of
her power to make most of them envious
and miserable, she had dressed herself very
carefully. She was just a little bored by her
present mode of existence. Routh could not
be much with her; and though she had brought
herself to believe that she really did feel an
absorbing passion for him, somehow or other
it left a good deal of her thoughts and her
time unabsorbed, and she did not exactly
know how to dispose of either. The romance
of this kind of incognito life was all very well
in its way, which was a pleasant way, and as far
as it went, which certainly was very far, but not
quite far enough. And she did get horridly
bored, there was no denying it. When Routh' s
daily letter had been read—for she exacted that
of him, of him who hated letter-writing, and
whose hard actuality of nature needed all the
incitement of her beauty, her coquetry, and her
artfulness to rouse him to sentiment and give
his language the eloquence of love—she had
nothing but novels to fall back upon, and
the vague prospect of a supplementary note
or two, or trying on a new dress, or thinking
what theatre she would go to, or what direction
her afternoon drive should take. She
was glad of the chance of seeing a new face,
though it was only a woman's; and then the
reason for receiving her was so sound, it was
impossible Routh could object. Indeed, she
could not see the force of his objections to her
going out more, and seeing people in general;
it could not matter now, and would sound
better hereafter than this hidden residence in
London; however, it could not last long, and
it was very romantic, very. She had not had
much chance in all her previous prosperous life of
playing at romance, and she liked it; she would
not like it, if it continued to mean boredom, much
longer, but there was no danger of that.

No. 4, Hollington-square, was one of those
London houses which every one knows,
furnished for people who take houses for the
season, prettily, flimsily, sparingly, a house which
tenants with money and taste could make very
striking and attractive, which tenants without
money and without taste would find very tolerable
in its original condition. Mrs. P. Ireton
Bembridge possessed both, and as she made it
a rule to have every advantage procurable by
the use of either, the drawing-room in which
she awaited the coming of her visitor was as
pretty and coquettish a room as could easily
have been seen. She had chosen a becoming
costume, and an equally becoming attitude; and
she looked beautiful indeed, in her rich morning
dress of black silk, faced with rose-coloured
satin and costly lace. The masses of her dark
hair were coiled smoothly round her head, her
white arms were without a jewel to turn the eye
from their shapely beauty. She glanced at one of
the many mirrors in the room as the page
announced "a lady," and felt perfectly satisfied.

The room was long and narrow, though not
large; and as Harriet walked from the door to
the hearth-rug on which Mrs. P. Ireton
Bembridge stood, having gracefully risen in an
attitude especially intended for her visitor's
admiration, that lady had time to observe her
appearance, and to experience a certain vague
sense of discomfort not altogether unlike alarm.
She saw a face which she remembered, but with
which she could not connect any distinct
recollection; a pale, fair, determined face with
smooth light-brown hair framing a broad, low
brow, with keen piercing blue eyes, which
looked steadily at her, and never dropped
their fine fringed lids, blue eyes in which power,
will, and knowledge dwelt, as the shallow-
souled woman they looked at, and through, felt,
but did not understand. A face, so fixed in its
expression of irremediable woe, a face so lost
with all its self-possession, so full of despair,
with all its might of will, that a duller intellect
than that of a meagre-brained woman must
have recognised a story in it such as happily
few human beings have to tell or to conceal.
Harriet did not speak, or make any sign of
salutation; but when she had quite reached her,
Mrs. P. Ireton Bembridge recovered herself,
and said, with all her accustomed grace:

"I am so much obliged to you for calling.
Pray take a seat. I think I know to what I am
indebted for the pleasure of your visit;" and
then she sank gracefully back into her low chair,
and smiled her very best smile. The very best
of those suited to the feminine capacity, of
course. Mrs. P. Ireton Bembridge had quite a
different set of smiles for men.

"I am quite sure you do not," said Harriet,
in a low firm voice, and without availing herself
of the invitation to be seated. "I am quite