"You have given me your sympathy. Is not that something? You have been a true friend to me." "For old friendship's sake--could I do less?" She flushed and said hurriedly. "My father will know how to thank you properly. When I see him----" and she unburdened her heart to the Secretary, who gave her a willing ear. Together they discussed her plans for the future, her return home, her welcome; in short, a thousand and one pleasant anticipations, till Stanley declared, regretfully, that he must go. "But you have stood already an hour," she murmured, "surely you will come in and rest." "An hour!" he exclaimed, looking at his watch. "Impossible!" "No," she said. "Not impossible, I also have stood." He was overcome at his thoughtlessness, but she silenced his excuses by throwing open the gate and saying: "Come." And he entered. * * * * * Miss Fitzgerald was seated at her ease in a West Indian chair on the lawn. A white parasol shielded her from the sun, and a novel lay unopened in her lap. As she leaned back looking up into the earnest face of a man, with a supercilious smile and a veiled fire in her blue eyes, she seemed to be at peace with herself and with the world. In reality, she was enduring the last of three most disagreeable encounters. Her first had been with her aunt, Mrs. Roberts, who, quite justly, ascribed the occurrences which had interrupted the harmony of her house-party to the machinations of her niece. "I invited you here at your own request," she had said, in a private interview before breakfast, in the course of which much righteous wrath was vented. "You assured me that Mr. Stanley was on the point of asking your hand in marriage, and only needed an opportunity of doing so; which I was the more willing to give, because I saw the extreme advisability of such a step. His actions have belied your words, and moreover, have made you the subject of unpleasant comment in my house, which has greatly annoyed me. I do not wish to be unkind, but you must understand that matters, for the rest of the time we are together, must run more smoothly, or I shall be obliged to suggest your returning to London." It is hard enough to endure the faulty criticism of an elderly and misguided person, when one is in the right; but when one is in the wrong, and has hanging over one the probability, if not the certainty, of coming disclosures, which will force threats to become realities, such a state of things is unbearable, and Miss Fitzgerald partook of her morning meal feeling that fate had been more than unkind. Immediately after breakfast she had been treated to an interview with the outraged Mr. Lambert, of which a detailed account is unnecessary, but which resulted in the unpalatable presentation of those obnoxious criticisms known as "home truths."