Hope is entirely dead in Mell's heart. Transplanted out of the lowly valley of her own birth to the mountain-tops of her soul's desire, she feels as lonely as we might imagine the spirit of Greek art, set down in a modern world. Turn whatever way she would, there was but one fate for her--martyrdom. If she did not marry Rube, she would be a martyr in her own humble home; if she did marry him, she would be a martyr in his more pretentious one; and there was not as great a difference as she had thought between the air in the valley and the air on the mountain-top. It is the lungs which breathe, and not the air inhaled, most at issue, and a martyr is a martyr anywhere, the social type being hardly less excruciating to undergo than others more quickly ended. Pitiful in the extreme are such thoughts in a young mind; pitiful such manifestations of suffering in one too young to suffer. How the people upstairs would be surprised if they could see her! How the Honorable Archibald, who liked things jolly, begawd! who thought all evidence of feeling bad form, you know; who believed, root and branch, in British stoicism, even in the jaws of death; how he would advise her in a spirit of friendliness and a well-bred way, not aw to make a blawsted dolt of herself--if he only knew. Fortunately, he did not know; fortunately, nobody knew. Nobody? Then who or what is that creature in semblance of man, in attitude of deepest thought, with folded arms and hanging head, darkly shadowed, dimly seen, scarcely discernible in the embrasure of the window over there? Spirit or man? If a man, he might be a dead one for all the noise he makes--only a dead man was never known before to use his eyes in such a lively manner, or his ears to such good purpose, or to betray so deep an interest in a living woman, even in a ball dress. Mell did not look towards him, did not know he was there; yet, on a sudden, as if from some inward sense of vigilance rather than any extraneous source of knowledge, her pulses strangely fluttered--she became aware that she was not in reality alone. _How_, in the absence of visual impression, we can only say by an instinct as unaccountable as the phenomenon of sound waves which excite wire vibrations. She was mysteriously imbued with another presence, if such a thing is possible, and in all the world there was but one who could so clothe the circumambient air in his own personality. That one was Jerome Devonhough. Perceiving she now knew he was there, he got up and came towards her. Mell did not look at him; she looked upon the floor. He looked straight at her, and looked so long and hard, and with a gaze so fixed and steady, that he seemed to be slowly absorbing her very being into his own entity.