She is sitting alone in her room that is like a cameo in the soft November dusk of the closing day. It is some three days since her reception and the meeting with Colonel Carlisle. She is thinking she will write and tell Lauraine about it, and then again she thinks she had better not. In this state of indecision she is disturbed by the entrance of one of the æsthetically-clad damsels of her household. "Do you receive, my lady?" she asks, presenting her with a card. Lady Etwynde glances at it, then blushes hotly. "Yes," she says, turning away so that her tell-tale face may not be noticed. She feels half ashamed, half glad. The name on the card is "Colonel Carlisle." She is dressed to-day in olive-green velvet, with touches of old yellow lace about the throat and wrists; the golden hair is coiled loosely about her beautifully shaped head, and waves in softly tangled curls and ripples above her brow. She looks very lovely, and her visitor's eyes tell her so as he bows over her slender white hand, and murmurs conventional greeting. "I am glad to find you at home," he says. "It is not my day," she answers, smiling up at the tall figure. "But perhaps you won't object to that. You would have found a crowd here had it been." "An æsthetic crowd, of course?" "Chiefly; but I have other society as well." "And do you live here quite alone?" he asks curiously. "Do you mean without a sheep-dog? Oh, yes. Although I don't go in for advanced thought, I fail to see why an unmarried woman can't live by herself instead of being bored with a companion." "And don't you find it lonely?" "I never have time," she answers tranquilly. "My days are always fully occupied." "And you are quite happy and--content?" "As much as any one can be, I suppose," she says, a faint colour coming into the proud, delicate face. "I think if one has occupation and interest one can never be quite unhappy." "And--affection?" he questions softly. "Oh, that, of course, one does not expect," she says hurriedly. "I think a placid life is, after all, the best. It is like monotones in colour--safe, restful, even it somewhat dull." "It sounds rather cheerless," says Colonel Carlisle gravely. "Art cannot satisfy our emotional faculties, or fill our hearts as human love and sympathy can." "Tennyson says, 'The feelings are dangerous guides,'" she answers bitterly; "and emotion is apt to make us capricious. As to sympathy, well, I don't think I have outlived that----" "But love, you have?" he interrupts softly. Her eyes meet his in startled confusion. All their ordinary calm is swept away. "Have you any right to ask such a question?" she says coldly. His face changes. A storm of feeling sweeps over his soul, and for a moment chains back the impetuous words he fain would utter. "No; I have not--unless a long, faithful memory of--you gives me any right."