"I have heard many tragic stories. People always do confide in me," she told him; "but have I met a man who has borne his trouble as you have borne yours. I feel a better woman from the experience. It has been a triumph of bravery and endurance!" "Think so?" said Francis. He was gratified to know that he had made such a good impression, and reminded himself insistently that lookers-on saw most of the game. He did this to quieten a tiresome inner voice which insisted that his cheerful mien was the result of cowardice rather than of bravery, the cowardice which refused to endure! "Still, you know," he declared lugubriously, "a fellow feels lonely--" The confidante sighed, and flicked her light eyelashes. "I know the feeling," she said. When a man has made up his mind that it is time to marry, it is foolish to abandon the plan because one woman out of the teeming millions in the land refuses to become his wife. This, at least, was Francis Manning's seasoned decision, and it was emphasised by the announcement of Lilith Wastneys' wedding, which appeared in the newspapers exactly three months after her refusal of himself. Whatever sentimental hankerings he might have cherished for Lilith the maid, it was clearly out of place to cast another thought towards the wife of Hereward Lowther. Francis had a deep respect for the conventions, and death itself could not have removed his former love to a more impassable distance. He heaved a sigh to her memory, and buried it underground. Within a week from that day he was engaged to the confidante. It seemed the obvious thing to do, for he knew her more intimately than any other girl of his acquaintance, and owed her a debt of gratitude for her sympathy in his former affair. She was quite a nice girl, too; not pretty, but amiable and healthy, with a small income of her own which would come in usefully towards running the house. He wished her eyelashes had not been quite so white; but one could not have everything. She was a nice, affectionate girl. The confidante accepted Francis because she was tired of living at home with a managing mamma, and wanted to start life on her own account. She liked Francis, was proud of his fine appearance, knew him to be good-tempered and honourable, and was complacently assured that they would "get on." Far better, she said, to begin with a sensible, open-eyed liking, than a headlong passion which would wear itself out before the honeymoon was over. It was, in short, a sensible marriage between eminently sensible contracting parties. The little God of Love had no part in the ceremony, but it is only fair to mention that nobody missed him.