Alas! I scarce know why."



It is late in the day when the professor enters Lady Baring's house.
He had determined not to wait till the morrow to see Perpetua. It
seemed to him that it would be impossible to go through another
sleepless night, with this raging doubt, this cruel uncertainty in
his heart.

He finds her in the library, the soft light of the dying evening
falling on her little slender figure. She is sitting in a big
armchair, all in black--as he best knows her--with a book upon her
knee. She looks charming, and fresh as a new-born flower. Evidently
neither lest night's party nor to-day's afternoon have had power to
dim her beauty. Sleep had visited _her_ last night, at all events.

She springs out of her chair, and throws her book on the table near
her.

"Why, you are the very last person I expected," says she.

"No doubt," says the professor. Who was the _first_ person she had
expected? And will Hardinge be here presently to plead his cause in
person? "But it was imperative I should come. There is something I
have to tell you--to lay before you."

"Not a mummy, I trust," says she, a little flippantly.

"A proposal," says the professor, coldly. "Much as I know you