"Modest creature!" ejaculated the Under-Secretary playfully with his lips; and in his heart vindictively, "Conceited devil!" "Please see me, Mrs. Stewart!" pleaded Goring, half kneeling on a chair and leaning over the crystal. "I do," she returned. "I'd rather not. You look so distorted and odd; and so do I, don't I? Dreadful! But the crystal's getting cloudy." "Then you're going really to see something!" exclaimed Miss Ormond. "How delightful! Come away directly, Mr. Goring, or you'll spoil everything." Sir Cyril and Davison looked up from some treasure of Greek art. The conversation was perfunctory, every one's curiosity waiting on Mildred and the crystal. "Don't you see anything yet, Mrs. Stewart?" asked Miss Ormond at length, impatiently. "No," replied Mildred, hesitatingly. "At least, not exactly. I see something like rushing water and foam." "The reflection of clouds overhead," pronounced the Under-Secretary, dogmatically, glancing upward. "I'm sure it's nothing of the kind," asserted Miss Ormond. "Please go on looking, Mrs. Stewart, and perhaps you'll see a water-spirit." "Why do you want her to see a water-spirit?" asked Davison, ironically. "In all countries of the world they are reckoned spiteful, treacherous creatures. I was once bitten by one severely, and I have never wanted to see one since." "Oh, Mr. Davison! Are you serious? What do you mean?" questioned Miss Ormond. Mrs. Stewart hastily put down the crystal. "I don't want to see one," she said; "I'm afraid it might bring me bad luck, and, besides, I can't wait for it, I've got several calls to make before I go home, and I think there's a storm coming." She shivered. "I'm quite cold." Miss Ormond said that must be the effect of the crystal, as the afternoon was still oppressively hot. Goring caught up with Mrs. Stewart in the gravel drive outside the house and walked through Kensington Gardens with her. It seemed to them both quite natural that they should be walking together, and their talk was in the vein of old friends who have met after a long separation rather than in that of new acquaintances. When he left her and turned to walk across Hyde Park towards Westminster, he examined his impressions and perceived that he was in a state of mind foreign to his nature, and therefore the butt of his ridicule; a state in which, if he and Mrs. Stewart had been unmarried persons, he would have said to himself, "That is the woman I shall marry." It would not have been a passion or an emotion that would have made him say that; it would have been a conviction. As it was, the thing was absurd. Cochrane had told him, half in jest, that Mrs. Stewart was a breaker of hearts, but had not hinted that her own was on the market. Her appearance made it surely an interesting question whether she had a heart at all.