on the last lines of a chapter to which her own act had deliberately fixed the close.  Any lingering hesitations as to the finality of her decision were dispelled by the imminent need of making it known to Deering; and when her visitor paused in his reminiscences to say, with a sigh, “But many things have happened to you too,” his words did not so much evokethe sense of her altered fortunes as the image of the protector to whom she was about to intrust them.

“Yes, many things; it’s three years,” she answered.

Deering sat leaning forward, in his sad exiled elegance, hiseyes gently bent on hers; and at his side she saw the solid form of Mr. Jackson Benn, with shoulders preternaturally squared by the cut of his tight black coat, and a tall shiny collar sustaining his baby cheeks and hard blue chin.  Then the vision faded as Deeringbegan to speak.

“Three years,” he repeated, musingly taking up her words.  “I’ve so often wondered what they’d brought you.”

She lifted her head with a quick blush, and the terrified wish that he should not, at the cost of all his notions of correctness, lapse into the blunder of becoming “personal.”

“You’ve wondered?” She smiled back bravely.

“Do you suppose I haven’t?” His look dwelt on her.  “Yes, Idaresay that was what you thought of me.”

She had her answer pat—­“Why, frankly, you know, I didn’t think of you.”  But the mounting tide of her poor dishonored memories swept it indignantly away.  If it was his correctness toignore, it could never be hers to disavow.

“_ Was_ that what you thought of me?” she heard himrepeat in a tone of sad insistence; and at that, with a quick lift of her head, she resolutely answered:  “How could I know what to think?  I had no word from you.”

If she had expected, and perhaps almost hoped, that this answer would create a difficulty for him, the gaze of quiet fortitude with which he met it proved that she had underestimatedhis resources.

“No, you had no word.  I kept my vow,” he said.

“Your vow?”

“That you shouldn’t have a word—­not a syllable.  Oh, I kept it through everything!”

Lizzie’s heart was sounding in her ears the old confused rumor of the sea of life, but through it she desperately tried to distinguish the still small voice of reason.

“What was your vow?  Why shouldn’t I have had asyllable from you?”

He sat motionless, still holding her with a look so gentle that it almost seemed forgiving.

Then abruptly he rose, and crossing the space between them, sat down in a chair at her side.  The deliberation of his movement might have implied a forgetfulness of changed conditions, and Lizzie, as if thus viewing it, drew slightly back; but he appeared not to notice her recoil, and his eyes, at last leaving her face, slowly and approvingly made the round of the small bright drawing-room.  “This is charming.  Yes, things have changed foryou,” he said.