Madeleine clung closer to the girl kneeling beside her. It almost seemed as if the urgent eager voice were not speaking in vain. A tap came at the door. Di, always shy of betraying emotion, was on her feet in a moment. Madeleine drew the screen hastily between herself and the light as she said, "Come in." It was the French maid, who explained that the dressmaker had sent the two rolls of brocade as she had promised, so that mademoiselle might judge of them in the piece. She brought them in with her, and spread them in artistic folds on two chairs. Madeleine sat up and gave a little sigh. "If she gives them up, she will give him up, too," thought Di. "This is the turning-point." "Di," she said earnestly, "which would you advise, the mauve or the white and gold? I always think you have such taste." Di started and turned a shade pale. She saw by that one sentence that the die had been thrown, though Madeleine was not herself aware of it. The moments of our most important decisions are often precisely those in which nothing seems to have been decided; and only long afterwards, when we perceive with astonishment that the Rubicon has been crossed, do we realize that in that half-forgotten instant of hesitation as to some apparently unimportant side issue, in that unconscious movement that betrayed a feeling of which we were not aware, our choice was made. The crises of life come, like the Kingdom of Heaven, without observation. Our characters, and not our deliberate actions, decide for us; and even when the moment of crisis is apprehended at the time by the troubling of the water, action is generally a little late. Character, as a rule, steps down first. It was so with Madeleine. Sir Henry owed his bride to the exactly timed appearance of a mauve brocade sprinkled with silver _fleur-de-lys_. The maid turned it lightly, and the silver threads gleamed through the rich pale material. "It is perfect," said Madeleine in a hushed voice; "absolutely perfect. Don't you think so, Di? And she says she will do it for forty guineas, as she is making me other things. The front is to be a silver gauze over plain mauve satin to match, and the train of the brocade. The white and gold is nothing to it." "It is very beautiful," said Di, looking at it with a kind of horror. It seemed to her at the moment as if every one had their price. Madeleine smiled faintly. She felt that Di must envy her. It was of course only natural that she should do so. A thought strayed across her mind that in the future many gowns of this description, hitherto unobtainable and unsuitable, might sweeten existence; and she would be kind to Di. She would press an old one, before it was really old, on her occasionally. Madeleine gave the sigh that accompanies relaxation from intense mental strain. "I will decide on the mauve," she said. CHAPTER VI. "Ready money of affection Pay, whoever drew the bill." CLOUGH.