Recently that young man had shared his time pretty equally between London and Lesser Thorpe. For one thing he was deeply in love with Hilda, for another he found the greatest possible comfort in Miriam's company. So far he was obliged to confess to himself that, notwithstanding his promise to Miss Crane, he had achieved nothing very definite even negatively speaking. His life in town continued pretty much as it had been. Every now and then he would put some mild restraint upon himself, but such times were few and far between, and the result but fleeting. There was no backbone in the man, and an entire absence of any power of resolve. But at Lesser Thorpe he was always the repentant prodigal. Hilda was his Venus, Miriam his Minerva; but like Paris he did not hesitate to bestow the apple on beauty rather than on wisdom. His choice was wholly characteristic of his nature. In life there was but one path for him--the path of dalliance and of ease. Notwithstanding the circumstances, it did not take Hilda long to dress on this occasion. Within ten minutes she was downstairs, and greeting Gerald with a smile. As she looked at him she thought how young, good-looking, and altogether desirable he was. She was sure she liked him as well as she could like any man. Hilda Marsh was a shallow girl, a vain girl, but on the whole not a bad girl. With a judicious bringing up she might have turned out a very respectable specimen of her sex; vain always, since vanity was the essence of her being, but still a woman of good instincts and some sense of duty in the world. As it was, she had not been thus blessed, and her position of beauty to the family, to be sold to the highest bidder, had done the rest. She had been taught that her mission in life was three-fold--to be careful of her beauty as her stock-in-trade, to catch a rich man with it, and to help her family when the rich man had been caught. In that misguided and slovenly household and sordid commonplace existence, there was nothing to appeal to or in the least degree to stimulate any of the other and finer feelings which might have lain dormant in her. What she saw around her gradually became reflected in her nature. As she saw others do, so she did, until she came to look upon material satisfaction, and the securing of it, as the whole object of life. But even so, as has been said, she was not wholly without redeeming qualities.