He led the way from the room, and Bettina followed in silence. She had had innumerable dreams of grandeur, poor child! but she had been too ignorant even to imagine such a place as this house. Its furnishing and decorations represented not only the accumulated wealth, but also the accumulated taste and opportunity, of many successive generations. She felt an ineffable emotion of deep, sensuous enjoyment in her present surroundings which made her heart leap at the idea that all these things might some day be hers. Lord Hurdly looked exceedingly well preserved, and that day might be very far distant. All the more reason, therefore, she told herself, why she should make peace between him and Horace, so that she might at least be sometimes a guest in this house, and be lifted into an atmosphere where she felt for the first time that she was in her true element. It was not only the magnificence which she saw on every side which so appealed to her. It was that air of the best in everything that made her feel, in Lord Hurdly's presence, as well as in his house, that civilization could not go further--that life, on its material side, had nothing more to offer. And Bettina had now reached a point in her experience where material pleasure seemed to be all that was left. She quite believed that all of the joy of loving was buried in the grave of her mother. Her heart was beating fast as she entered Lord Hurdly's library and saw him close the door behind them. It then struck her as being a little peculiar that he should have brought her here without even knowing who she was or what she wanted of him. A doubt, a scarcely possible suspicion, came into her mind. "Have you any idea who I am?" she said. "It suffices me to know what you are." "Ah! I do not understand," she said, puzzled. "You have come upon me without ceremony, madam," said Lord Hurdly, with a slightly old-fashioned pomposity in his polished manner, "and I may therefore ask you to excuse an absence of ceremony in me in alluding to the impression which you have made upon me. You are a stranger to me--an American, I judge from your speech. I hope that I am to be so fortunate as to hear that there is something which I can do for you." "There is," Bettina said--"a thing so vital and important to me that, now I am in your presence, I am afraid to venture to speak, for fear you may refuse to hear my prayer." "You are in small danger from that quarter, I assure you. I am ready to do for you whatever you may ask. Let me, however, put a few questions before I hear your request. You are wearing mourning. Is it, perhaps, for your husband?" "For my mother," said Bettina, with a sudden trembling of the lip and suffusion of the eyes which gave her a new charm, in revealing the fact that this young goddess had a human heart which could be quickly stirred to emotion.