her jewels. How little he dreamt that the very packet which had helped
to cement into intimacy his first acquaintance with her should prove
the means of dashing his cherished hopes to the ground, and raising
yet another obstacle to shut him out from his lovely client!

While Maud is meditating in the back drawing-room, and Aunt Agatha,
having removed the traces of emotion from her eyes and nose, is trying
on a bonnet up-stairs, Dick Stanmore has shaken off the dust of a
railway journey, in his lodgings, dressed himself from top to toe,
and is driving his phaeton merrily along Piccadilly, on his way to
Belgrave Square. How his heart leaps as he turns the well-known
corner! how it beats as he skips into his step-mother's house!--how
it stops when he reaches the door of that back drawing-room, where,
knowing the ways of the establishment, he hopes to find his treasure
alone! The colour returns to his face. There she is in her usual
place, her usual attitude, languid, graceful, indolent, yet glad to
see him nevertheless.

"I'm in luck," said Dick, blushing like a school-boy. "My train was
late, and I was so afraid you'd be gone out before I could get here.
It seems so long since I've seen you. And where have you been, and
how's my mother, and what have you been doing?"

"What have _you_ been doing, rather?" repeats the young lady, giving
him a cool and beautiful hand that he keeps in his own as long as he
dares. "Three days at Newmarket are long enough to make 'a man or
a mouse,' as you call it, of a greater capitalist than you, Mr.
Stanmore. Seriously, I hope you've had a good week."

"Only lost a pony on the whole meeting," answered Dick triumphantly.