. . .He himself could give no explanation save that he had been overcome by a feeling of nausea. So, after an apology, he went at once to bed. The party broke up, and Ruth retired, wondering greatly at her lover's strange indisposition.

Half an-hour later she was seated before her bedroom fire in dressing-gown and slippers. Having dismissed her maid, she indulged herself in a reverie with which Neil Webster and her chances of obtaining her father's consent to her marriage with him were mainly concerned.

She was aroused by a knock at the door, and in reply to her invitation Mrs. Marshall entered the room. At the first glimpse of that iron face the girl remembered a slip she had made in addressing her lover by his Christian name.

"You are in love with that violinist," said the elder woman, sitting down and fixing her niece with a piercing gaze.

"How do you know that?" asked the girl, coolly. She had been half-prepared for. . . Read More