"What has come over you, child?" said Lady Dudgeon to Eleanor, two or three days afterwards. "This is the third time this morning that I have caught you in a day-dream. Anyone who did not know better, would certainly say that you were in love." "Then they would certainly say what was not true," said Eleanor, with a blush and a smile. "I hope so, I am sure," said her ladyship, emphatically. "I don't think your time has come yet, dear." Eleanor was used to Lady Dudgeon's phraseology, and did not reply. No; she certainly was not in love, she said to herself. But it was rather strange how often Mr. Pomeroy had been in her thoughts of late. She had caught herself thinking about him several times: daydreaming, Lady Dudgeon called it. And why should she not think about him? she asked herself. He interested her. There was about him something different from anyone she had ever met before. If only she could have assisted him to get into Parliament, how happy that would have made her! Despite his careless, easy way of talking, she felt sure that he was ambitious. But with only a hundred and fifty pounds a year, and no friends to push him forward, a man's ambitious dreams must perforce be buried in his heart. If only she could endow him with some portion of her wealth!---- But here she broke off with a blush, and made up her mind that for the future she would not think quite so much about Mr. Pomeroy. "I must remember that I am not to think quite so much about him," she said to herself. But the very fact of having to remember this had only the effect of bringing his image more frequently to her mind. CHAPTER XII. THE FACE IN THE GLASS. From Harley Street, Cavendish Square, to Ormond Square, Bayswater, is but a short distance as the crow flies, but it was enough to transform the John Pomeroy of one place into the Gerald Warburton of the other. And such transformations were very frequent with Gerald just at this time. Now that he had learned to love Ambrose Murray's daughter, Ambrose Murray himself had acquired a fresh interest in his eyes, and he very rarely let more than two days pass over without finding himself in Miss Bellamy's sitting-room. From Miss Bellamy he had but one secret--his love for Eleanor. Everything else he told her: but to Ambrose Murray nothing was told. Murray had not the slightest idea that his daughter was in London; and so incurious was he respecting her, that he never even asked the name of the friends with whom she was living; and yet it was impossible to doubt that in his strangely constituted heart he loved her passionately. He still adhered to his first determination--not to see her, nor even to let her become aware of his existence, till he could stand before her, a man whose innocence the world was now as eager to proclaim as it had been before to swear that he was guilty.