Later in the evening, Victor Clare was leaving the drawing-room as Miss Milbourne entered it. They came face to face rather unexpectedly, and while the gentleman fell back, the lady extended her hand. "Have you stayed away so long that you have forgotten your friends, Major Clare?" she said with a smile which was bright but rather tremulous, like a gleam of sunshine on rippling water. "You have not even said good-evening to me, and yet you have an air as if you had said good-night to the rest of the company." "So I have," answered Victor, smiling in turn, partly from the pleasure of meeting her, partly from the sheer magnetism of her glance, "but it is no fault of mine that I have not been able to speak to you: I have found no opportunity." "But I thought you always said that; people made opportunities when they desired to do so?" "Then the time has come for me to retract my assertion. As a general rule, a man cannot make opportunities: he can only take advantage of them when they come, as I hope to take advantage of the present," he added smiling. "But I thought you were going home?" "I _was_ going home a minute ago, but so long as you will let me talk to you I shall stay." "It is a very small favor to grant," said Eleanor, blushing a little. "But why were you leaving so early?" "Partly because I had no hope of seeing you; partly because I am not a 'young duke' to pencil a line to my steward and know that a princely collation will be served at noon to-morrow for half a hundred, or even for a dozen or two people." "What do you mean?" she asked, for though she caught the allusion to Disraeli's rose-colored romance, the application puzzled her. "I see you have not heard of our gypsy plan," he answered, and at once proceeded to detail it. She was not so much delighted as he expected, but a pretty, lucid gleam came into her eyes at the mention of Claremont. "I shall be glad to see your home," she said quietly. "I have heard so much of its beauty and its antiquity." "It is pretty, and it is old," said he, "but it will not be mine much longer. I am negotiating its sale now." She started: "What! you were in earnest, then? You are really going to Egypt?" "Yes, I am going to Egypt. Why should I stay? What has life to offer me here save vegetation? There, at least, I can find action." She looked at him with a strange, wistful expression which struck and startled him. He felt as if a prisoned soul suddenly sprang up and gazed at him out of the clear blue depths of her eyes. "Oh what a good thing it is to be a man!" she said. "How free you are! how able to do what you please and go where you please--to seek action and to find it! Oh, Major Clare, you ought to thank God night and day that He did not make you a woman!" "I am glad, certainly, that I am a man," said Victor honestly. "But you are the last woman in the world from whom I should have expected to hear such rebellious sentiments."