“Evangeline,” he said. “I shall always love you, but Miss Grey is an estimable young woman, there is not a word to be said against her moral character--and I have promised her my hand in marriage--so perhaps we had better say good-bye.” “Good-bye,” I said, “but I consider I have every reason to feel insulted by your offer, which was not, judging from your subsequent remarks, worth a moment’s thought!” “Oh, but I love you!” he said, and by his face, for the time, this was probably true. So I did not say any more, and we rose and joined the bridge players. And I contrived that he should not speak to me again alone before he said good-night. “Did Malcolm propose to you,” Lady Ver asked, as we came up to bed. “I thought I saw a look in his eye at dinner.” I told her he had done it in a kind of way, with a reservation in favour of Miss Angela Grey. “That is too dreadful!” she said. “There is a regular epidemic in some of the Guards’ regiments just now to marry these poor common things with high moral characters, and--indifferent feet! but I should have thought the cuteness of the Scot would have protected Malcolm from their designs. Poor Aunt Katherine!” CLARIDGE’S, _Saturday, Nov. 26th_. LADY VER went off early to the station, to catch her train to Northumberland this morning, and I hardly saw her to say good-bye. She seemed out of temper too, on getting a note, she did not tell me whom it was from, or what it was about--only she said immediately after, that I was not to be stupid. “Do not play with Christopher further,” she said, “or you will lose him. He will certainly go and see you to-morrow--he wrote to me this morning in answer to mine of last night--but he says he won’t go to the Zoo--so you will have to see him in your sitting-room after all--he will come about four.” I did not speak. “Evangeline,” she said, “promise me you won’t be a fool----” “I--won’t be a fool,” I said. Then she kissed me, and was off, and a few moments after I also started for Claridge’s. I have a very nice little suite right up at the top, and if only it were respectable for me, and I could afford it, I could live here very comfortably by myself for a long time. At a quarter to two I was ringing the bell at 200, Carlton House Terrace, Lady Merrenden’s House--with a strange feeling of excitement and interest. Of course it must have been because once she had been engaged to papa. In the second thoughts take to flash I remembered Lord Robert’s words when I talked of coming to London alone at Branches; how he would bring me here, and how she would be kind to me until I could “hunt round.” Oh! it came to me with a sudden stab. He was leaning over Lady Ver in the northern train by now. Such a stately beautiful hall it is--when the doors open--with a fine staircase going each way, and full of splendid pictures, and the whole atmosphere pervaded with an air of refinement and calm.