Perhaps the things detrimental to him that she had heard previously had some truth in them then, but he was changed now. Love had changed him. He was like another man. She had seen and felt it in a thousand ways that could not be translated into speech or writing. It was just that he was different, and in every particular it was to his advantage. She was different too. She did not resent the kiss, because she knew that he honestly cared for her. And she knew, too, that she honestly cared for him. The end of the enigmatical sentence rankled a little, but she did not led herself dwell upon it. She chose instead to remember how he had kissed her; and that he had confessed he was head over ears in love with her. Which only showed that Hal—for all her worldly wisdom and practical common sense—could be as blind and as romantic as anyone when her heart was touched, and her pulses romping feverishly at a memory that thrilled all her being. Three days later she had heard the conversation. Of course it was absurd—manifestly so—and yet, and yet— After a miserable twenty-four hours of fighting against her own uneasiness, she paid the flying visit to Lorraine, to see if she could glean any light on the gossip from her, only to return to the office baffled and tormented. It was the enigmatical sentence that pressed forward now, instead of the thrilling confession that he loved her. Was it possible he was indeed so base as to love her and tell her in the very same week that he had asked another woman to be his wife? And if so, what had prompted him? What was in his mind? Why had he not left things as they were, and refrained both from the kiss and the confession? And then above her tortured feelings rose the triumphant thought, goading and pleasing at the same time: “Whether it is true or not, he loves _me_—not her, the heiress, but me—Hal Pritchard—the peniless City worker.” CHAPTER XXXI In the evening came the party at Dick Bruce’s home, and it was necessary, she knew, to thrust all recollection of Sir Edwin aside, in order to give rise to no questioning and appear as usual. So she dressed herself with special care, rubbed a pink tinge on to her white cheeks, bathed and refreshed eyes dulled by worry and shadows, and made her appearance, looking, if anything, a little more radiant than usual. “By Jove! you look stunning, Hal,” was her jovial uncle’s warm greeting. “Who’d ever have thought, to see the ugly little imp of a small child you were, that you would grow up into a fashionable, striking woman? I congratulate you. When’s the happy man coming along?” “When I’m tired of enjoying of myself,” she laughed, “and feel equal to coping with anything as trying as a husband. At present a brother keeps me quite sufficiently occupied,” and she passed on.