meeting was in one of the crowds of London society, where all the world is; but Winton saw nothing except those soft eyes which were looking for him. How their hands met, in what seemed only the ordinary greeting to other people, clasping each other as if they never could part again! They did not say much, and she did not even venture, except by momentary glance now and then, to meet his eye. There was scarcely even opportunity for a whisper on his part to ask what he was to do; for as he stooped for this purpose to Lady Jane’s ear, the Duchess, who was looking very serious, but who had not refused to shake hands with him, laid a finger upon his arm. “Mr Winton,” she said, “I should like to see you to-morrow about twelve. I have something to say to you.” She had looked very grave, but at the end brightened into a smile, yet shook her head. “I don’t know what to say to you,” she added hurriedly; “there will be dreadful difficulties in the way.” To-morrow at twelve! He seemed to tread upon difficulties and crush them under his feet as he went home that evening; but with the morning a little thrill of apprehension came. CHAPTER IV. A DISAPPOINTMENT. That morning, Winton went with his heart beating to Grosvenor Square. He was not overawed by the stately stillness of the place, the imposing dim vacancy of the suite of rooms through which he was led to the Duchess’s boudoir. He had a fine house himself, and everything handsome about him, and he did not feel that Lady Jane would make any marked descent either in comfort or luxury should she abandon these gilded halls for his. To tell the truth, he thought the gilding was overdone, not to say a little tarnished and in questionable taste; but that was the fault of the time in which it was executed. He was so little alarmed that he could notice all this. He had seen those rooms before only in the evening, when they were full of company, and looked very different from now, when they lay, in the freshness of the morning, all empty and silent, the windows open, and the sun-blinds down, and nobody visible. Naturally the lover looked, as he passed through the apartment in which his lady lived, for some trace of her habitual occupation. Was that hers, that little chair by the window, the table with work on it, and some books, and a single rose in a glass? He would have taken the rose on the chance, if that solemn personage in front of him had not kept within arm’s length. There was a portrait of her on the wall; but it did not, of course, do her justice, indeed was an unworthy daub, as anybody could see. Thus he stepped through one room after another, treading on air, his heart beating, not with apprehension, but with soft excitement and happiness. She should have a better lodging than this, rooms decorated expressly for her, pictures of a very different kind; her home should be worthy of her, if any mortal habitation could ever be worthy of such a beautiful soul. In