If he had not been standing with his back to the light, the two ladies might have seen a dusky flush suffuse his face as he pronounced these words. Never before had he told so deliberate a falsehood. But he had feared to tell the truth. "They will never guess her secret from her manner," he thought; "and if they question her, she will know how to baffle their curiosity." On the very day that ended the stipulated week, Honoria Milford made her appearance in Arlington Street. Sir Oswald was in his library, seated in an easy-chair before the fire-place, with a book in his hand, but with no power to concentrate his attention to its pages. He was sitting thus when the door was opened, and a servant announced-- "Miss Milford!" Sir Oswald rose from his chair, and beheld an elegant young lady, who approached him with a graceful timidity of manner. She was simply dressed in gray merino, a black silk mantle, and a straw bonnet, trimmed with white ribbon. Nothing could have been more Quaker-like than the simplicity of this costume, and yet there was an elegance about the wearer which the baronet had seldom seen surpassed. He rose to welcome her. "You have just arrived in town?" he said. "Yes, Sir Oswald; a hackney-coach brought me here from the coach-office." "I am very glad to see you," said the baronet, holding out his hand, which Honoria Milford touched lightly with her own neatly gloved fingers; "and I am happy to tell you that I have secured you a home which I think you will like." "Oh, Sir Oswald, you are only too good to me. I shall never know how to thank you." "Then do not thank me at all. Believe me, I desire no thanks. I have done nothing worthy of gratitude. An influence stronger than my own will has drawn me towards you; and in doing what I can to befriend you, I am only giving way to an impulse which I am powerless to resist." The girl looked at her benefactor with a bewildered expression, and Sir Oswald interpreted the look. "Yes," he said, "you may well be astonished by what I tell you. I am astonished myself. There is something mysterious in the interest which you have inspired in my mind." Although the baronet had thought continually of his _protégée_ during the past week, he had never asked himself if there might not be some simple and easy solution possible for this bewildering enigma. He had never asked himself if it were not just within the limits of possibility that a man of fifty might fall a victim to that fatal fever called love. He looked at the girl's beautiful face with the admiration which every man feels for the perfection of beauty--the pure, calm, reverential feeling of an artist, or a poet--and he never supposed it possible that the day might not be far distant when he would contemplate that lovely countenance with altered sentiments, with a deeper emotion.