'I had saved the money.'

'But not for that!'

'For nothing half or quarter as important. But I had the other to
the same size, so it is sure to fit.'

Maude had pushed up her veil, and sat with the little golden circlet
in her hand, looking down at it, while the dim watery London sunlight
poured through the window, and tagged all her wandering curls with a
coppery gleam. It was a face beautiful in itself, but more beautiful
for its expression--sensitive, refined, womanly, full of innocent
archness and girlish mischief, but with a depth of expression in the
eyes, and a tender delicacy about the mouth, which spoke of a great
spirit with all its capacities for suffering and devotion within.
The gross admirer of merely physical charms might have passed her
over unnoticed. So might the man who is attracted only by outward
and obvious signs of character. But to the man who could see, to the
man whose own soul had enough of spirituality to respond to hers, and
whose eye could appreciate the subtlety of a beauty which is of the
mind as well as of the body, there was not in all wide London upon
that midsummer day a sweeter girl than Maude Selby, as she sat in her
grey merino dress with the London sun tagging her brown curls with
that coppery glimmer.

She handed back the ring, and a graver expression passed over her
mobile face.

'I feel as you said in your letter, Frank. There IS something tragic
in it. It will be with me for ever. All the future will arrange