“_I_ should judge,” he said, smiling, “if I could form any opinion from the court which I saw you holding as I entered, that you would be considered quite an acquisition in London circles.” He did not say that _he_ should consider her such, and a thrill of pain shot through her heart at his indifference; but she appeared to take it as a personal compliment from him, and answered, with a shy look: “Thank you; I find it very pleasant to be here, at all events.” Her tone, her glance, and the emphasis which she threw into that last sentence, would have turned half the heads in that room, but they did not move him in the least. He was constantly thinking of a fair, sweet face, framed in gold; of azure eyes, with white lids and long, curling lashes, and smiling coral lips, with the gleam of small white teeth between; of his bright, beautiful Star—the light of his life. He was thinking of that day when they drove on the beach at Coney Island, when he had told her of his love, and won her promise to be his wife; how she had called him “Archie” in those sweet, low tones, which had made his heart thrill with an ecstasy it had never known before; while this proud, brilliant girl had no power to stir even a feeling of friendship in his breast. She kept him at her side for half an hour or more, and then she was obliged to release him, and fulfill an engagement to dance. But her heart was full of a passionate longing to win his love; he had never appeared so grand and manly to her before; and as she stood before her glass that night, after her return from Lady Tukesbury’s reception, and removed the flowers from her hair and bosom, she said, while she set her small white teeth resolutely together: “I will move heaven and earth to win him; I will bend all my energies to become Lady Carrol. A whole year has passed and he has not married; there was not even any one present to-night to whom he paid particular attention, and it cannot be possible that he is still grieving for that milk-and-water beauty, Star Gladstone. No; I have the field clear to myself, and I swear I will yet be Countess of Carrol.” “But suppose he is not to be won—suppose you fail in what you have sworn to accomplish by fair means or foul?” whispered something within, with such startling distinctness that it almost seemed like a human voice. “If I fail!” she repeated, growing white to her very lips. “If I _cannot_ win the man whom I love with my whole soul, then”—and there was a look of wretchedness, almost of despair, in her midnight eyes at the thought—“then I will marry some poor fool who shall lose his head over my pretty face, and be lady somebody else.” CHAPTER XXXVII. THE MOCK MARRIAGE.