Oddly enough, Lossie seemed the happiest of the three, and having made her supreme appeal to Carlton, had apparently forgotten all about it. She met him without embarrassment, was friendly without effort--sometimes he rubbed his eyes, and thought he must have dreamed that vivid scene with her in Gay's den; yet he found himself thinking of it more often as time went on, and sometimes searched her intensely blue eyes for even a trace of the memory of it. But he found none--if Lossie, indeed, were playing a game, she played it magnificently well. She neither sought nor avoided him, was quite pleasant, but profoundly indifferent, when they met at Connaught Square or elsewhere, and, most damning proof of all that she had ceased to value his opinion, permitted herself slight lapses in manner, and carelessnesses in dress before him. She even yawned occasionally in his face, treating him, as he said angrily to himself, like some damned old woman rather than the man whom she most wished to please--but did she? He came to the conclusion that her outbreak had been a fit of nerves, combined with an interested desire to share his very handsome fortune, and that having failed, she thought no more about him, but decided to turn her attention elsewhere, the opportunity for doing so occurring very shortly after his own engagement. For the unexpected had happened. Mrs. Elkins was being dressed by her maid to go to her lawyers, there to sign a fresh will she had made, by which she left everything to her favourite of the moment, and away from George Conant, who had annoyed her, when in the mirror, the woman saw the old lady's face contorted, terrible, with the most ghastly look of fear in her eyes, and though she struggled and fought dumbly for hours, she never spoke again. George flew to Lossie the moment he was certain of what he had to offer her, and she accepted him on the spot, to his intense joy, while Gay so warmly encouraged the pair at her house, that Carlton one day complained bitterly of the ubiquity of that "grinning idiot," George Conant, who certainly since his accession to fortune, was more than ever like a Cheshire cat. "He is an excellent match," said Gay coldly, "and what is better, he adores Lossie--I don't see why they should not be very happy. She will be the prettiest woman in his regiment, and have no end of a good time." Could this be Gay speaking--Gay who at one time had been all heart and no head, who was now all head and no heart? "I should have thought," he said, "that love might have some voice in the matter. No woman, surely, could love George Conant-- "Oh," said Gay bitterly, "when a girl can't marry the man she loves, she may just as well marry the man who loves her"--and Carlton winced.