Steadily acting upon the plan he had laid down for himself, George Ritherdon frequented Gertrude's society not often enough to make his visits a subject of comment, not sufficiently seldom to induce her to think him indifferent or estranged. She and Eleanor were going through the ordinary routine of the life of London in the season; he rarely participated in its more tumultuous and irrational pleasures. But he kept a tolerably strict watch upon Gertrude for all that; and he had no reason to believe, at the end of the second month of her stay in London, that any one of the numerous admirers with whom rumour and his own observation had accredited her, had found the slightest favour with the young lady of the Deane. Before the end of that second month, Robert Meredith and George Ritherdon had parted company. The former could perhaps have given a plain and conclusive reason for his desire that so it should be; but, in the case of the latter, the actuating motive was more vague. George felt that they did not get on together. The Baldwins were hardly ever mentioned between them, though each knew the terms on which the other stood with the family, and they not unfrequently met at the house in Portman-square. The dissolution of the old arrangement, once so pleasant to them both, was plainly imminent to each before it actually occurred, and it might have come about after a disagreeable fashion but for a fortunate accident. The gentleman who had been George's university tutor, and with whom he had always maintained intimate relations, died, and bequeathed to George his numerous and valuable library. What was he to do with the books? Their joint chambers would not accommodate them. George took a large set in another building, and the difficulty was solved, to their mutual relief, without a quarrel. The season was a brilliant one, and Gertrude and Eleanor Baldwin had their full share of its glories and its pleasures. They enjoyed it, after their different fashions, but Gertrude more than Eleanor. In the heart of each there was indeed a disquieting secret; but in the one case there was no self-reproach, no misgiving, while in the other that voice would occasionally make itself heard. As time passed over, Gertrude felt more and more hopeful that George Ritherdon loved her, though for some reason which she could not penetrate, but to which it was not difficult for her docile nature to submit, he did not at present avow the sentiment. Her happiness was not lost, it was only deferred; she would be patient, and then she could always comfort herself with the knowledge that her love for him--pure, lofty, with no element of torment in it--could never die, or be taken from her, while she lived.