London in those days was a dreary spot for anyone requiring a quiet place wherein to look Fate in the face; but Marrion knew her way to two places where she could secure peace and quiet--the National Gallery and the reading-room of the British Museum. She had often spent long hours in the former, not moving from place to place, but seated before some masterpiece, scarce seeing it, yet vaguely learning something from it which had been missing in her life; but to-day she chose the latter, as being farther away, and it was time she wished to kill--time in which it was possible to hear the familiar step on the stairs, perhaps to be greeted by some affectionate jest that stockings were not mended or that new handkerchiefs required marking. She smiled as she thought of those seven long years during which she had kept this man as comfortable and as tidy as she could, during which she had managed for him as well as any woman could have managed, and tried to imagine the estimation in which such devotion would be held by the wives and mothers for whose infants she worked. She was a constant reader at the Museum, having, when she came to London, set herself deliberately to gain what she had perforce missed in her life, so she found a place, sent in her slip for a book, and was soon apparently studying it. But she was not even thinking. In the great crises of life one does not weigh pros and cons; decision comes from outside to those who recognise that there is something beyond one's own individual life. It is those who do not see, who fail to recognise the spiritual plane, who cannot distinguish good from evil, evil from good, who err past forgiveness. And from the moment Marrion Paul had heard of the condition on which old Lord Drummuir would buy the colonelcy she had known she must face him again. The only question was when, and how. The sooner the better. She would inquire about the journey on her way home. It was dark ere she arrived there with a long list of startings and arrivals in her hand, and a new sense of elation in her heart--the elation of the born fighter at yet another chance of battle. "The Major was here asking for you, ma'am, about five o'clock," said the maidservant, "and he said if you could let him have two or three white ties to-night he would be obliged, as he is going into the country early to-morrow." Marrion laughed. So much the better for her plans. "Take a hot iron to the dining-room," she said, "and set the lace-board. You can take the ties round to his lodgings after supper." CHAPTER II