“Very well,” Ingram said, “I shall be able to tell you to-morrow.”

To be so phlegmatic and matter-of-fact a person, Mr. Ingram was sorely disturbed on going home that evening, nor did he sleep much during the night.  For the more that he speculated on all the possibilities that might arise from his meeting those people in the Tyrol, the more pertinaciously did this refrain follow these excursive fancies:  “If I go to the Tyrol I shall fall in love with that girl, and ask her to marry me.  And if I do so, what position should I hold, with regard to her, as a penniless man with a rich wife?”

He did not look at the question in such light as the opinion of the world might throw on it.  The difficulty was what she herself might afterward come to think of their mutual relations.  True it was, that no one could be more gentle and submissive to him than she appeared to be.  In matters of opinion and discussion he already ruled with an autocratic authority which he fully perceived himself, and exercised, too, with some sort of notion that it was good for this clear-headed young woman to have to submit to control.  But of what avail would this moral authority be as against the consciousness she would have that it was her fortune that was supplying both with the means of living?

He went down to his office in the morning with no plans formed.  The forenoon passed, and he had decided on nothing.  At mid-day he suddenly be-thought him that it would be very pleasant if Sheila would go and see Mrs. Lorraine; and forthwith he did that which would have driven Frank Lavender out of his senses—­he telegraphed to Mrs. Lorraine for permission to bring Sheila and her father to dinner at five.  He certainly knew that such a request was a trifle cool, but he had discovered that Mrs. Lorraine was not easily shocked by such audacious experiments on her good nature.  When he received the telegram in reply he knew it granted what he had asked.  The words were merely, “Certainly, by all means, but not later than five.”

Then he hastened down to the house in which Sheila lived, and found that she and her father had just returned from visiting some exhibition.  Mr. Mackenzie was not in the room.

“Sheila,” Ingram said, “what would you think of my getting married?”

Sheila looked up with a bright smile and said, “It would please me very much—­it would be a great pleasure to me; and I have expected it for some time.”

“You have expected it?” he repeated with a stare.

“Yes,” she said quietly.

“Then you fancy you know—­” he said, or rather stammered, in great embarrassment, when she interrupted him by saying,

“Oh yes, I think I know.  When you came down every evening to tell me all the praises of Mrs. Lorraine, and how clever she was, and kind, I expected you would come some day with another message; and now I am very glad to hear it.  You have changed all my opinions about her, and—­”