On the day following the drawing-room a prearranged conference was held in the “palatial home” of Mr. Jones in Park Lane. It was the hideous and abandoned house of a South African millionnaire, this home, but Lady Ishbel had refurnished it by degrees, and her boudoir in particular, with its pale French silks and many flowers, its Empire furniture, both delicately wrought and solid, framed appropriately a soft aristocratic loveliness that almost concealed strong bones and firm lines. As she is to play so intimate a part in the development of our heroine, she may as well be described here as later. She had quantities of curly silky chestnut hair, long brown eyes with fine fringes and an expression both modest and piquant, a straight little nose with arching nostril, a gracefully cut mouth with pink lips, and a square little chin with a dimple in it. Her figure was womanly, not too thin, and her capable hands were seldom idle. Just now she was retrimming a hat that had arrived the day before from the milliner of the moment in Paris. It may be added that her smile was the sweetest in London; and her voice was always rich and deep, with a natural vibration quite at the command of her will. Charm radiated from her, and she was an outrageous flirt. In fact she looked with suspicion upon women that did not flirt, estimating them below the normal and not to be trusted in anything. Men adored her, even when she laughed at them, which she often did in the most distracting manner imaginable.

Mrs. Herbert was standing in her favorite attitude behind a low fire-screen, her black eyes flashing, her nostrils dilating, while her young brother-in-law paced excitedly up and down the room. He was thinner than when he had fallen in love a month since, almost pallid, and his eyes had a strained look. There was no possible doubt as to what was the matter with him.

“Don’t be an ass,” said Mrs. Herbert. “You are acting like the hero of a melodrama?—”

“I tell you something must be done!” cried the young man. “The squadron has been sighted off the Azores?—”

“Well, what are you going to do about it? She’s not in love with you—doesn’t care a rap?—”

“What chance have I had to make her? I never see her alone, never get a chance to talk to her for half an hour at a time. You promised to help me?—”

“Mrs. Winstone has never let the poor thing go for a minute. She’s overdone the business. Julia’s had no time to think, goes to sleep at problem plays, and knows no more than when she arrived?—”

“If I only had the chance to teach her!” cried Herbert, with flashing eyes.

“Look at here,” said his sister-in-law, grasping a point of the screen with either hand; “let us have this out. If your brains are not addled, they must have conceived some sort of a plan. What is it? A liaison? An elopement? I approve of neither. I’d like to save the poor child from that man, but the frying pan’s as good as the fire?—”

“No liaison! I’d elope with her to-morrow if she’d go with me?—”

“And disgrace a great family!” said Ishbel, softly.

“Oh, hang the family,” cried Mrs. Herbert, whose mother’s blood was already working in her. “The duke’s an old pudding. Lady Arabella and her sisters are cracked old sign-posts; and a scandal would serve Mrs. Winstone right for not packing the child back on the next steamer to her sister with the whole unvarnished truth in a letter. Not she, however; she wants to be aunt to a duchess. What I’m thinking of is Julia. The conceit of man! What do you suppose you could give her in exchange for disgrace?—”

“Love!” cried Nigel. “I tell you it can make up for anything when it is strong enough.”

“Yes, when it is,” said Mrs. Herbert, who, recovering from her own infatuation for a brainless beauty, was not in a romantic frame of mind. “But she doesn’t love you, in the first place, and in the second, no woman can live her life on love, any more than a man can. She wants children, position of some sort, the society of other women—that last is one of woman’s biggest wants, and no man ever realizes it.”

“But love must be a wonderful thing,” said Ishbel, who had never experienced it. “It would almost be worth any sacrifice, especially if one had had things first, only men are always so funny in one way or another; one becomes disenchanted just in the nick of time.”

“No man lives who can make up to a woman for the loss of everything else,&rdquo............