“Who told you I was beginning a new one?” asked she pertly.

“No one can blame you, provided you let him loose first.  It is considered respectable, you know, to be off with the old love before you are on with the new.  Nay, it may be only a superstition.”

“Superstition!” she repeated in an awed voice that gave him his cue, and he went on—-"Oh yes, a lady has been even known to come and shake hands with the other party after he had been hanged to give back her troth, lest he should haunt her.”

“Allen isn’t hanged,” said Elvira, half frightened, half cross.  “Why doesn’t he come himself?”

“Shall he? " said Jock.

“My dear child, I’ve been running madly up and down for you!” cried Lady Flora, suddenly descending on them, and carrying off her charge with a cursory nod to the Guardsman, marking the difference between a detrimental and even the third son of a millionaire.

He saw Elvira no more that night, and the next post carried a note to Belforest.

31st May.

DEAR ALLEN-—I don’t know whether you will thank me, but I tried to get a something definite out of your tricksy Elf, and the chief result, so far as I can understand the elfish tongue, is, that she sought no change, and the final sentence was, ’Why doesn’t he come himself?’ I believe it is her honest wish to go on, when she is left to her proper senses; but that is seldom.  You must take this for what it is worth from the buffoon,
                                                       J. L. B.

Allen came full of hope, and called the next morning.  Miss Menella was out riding.  He got a card for a party where she was sure to be present, and watched the door, only to see her going away on the arm of Lord Clanmacnalty to some other entertainment.  He went to Mr. Folliott’s door, armed with a note, and heard that Lady Flora and Miss Menella were gone out of town for a few days.  So it went on, and he turned upon Jock with indignation at having been summoned to be thus deluded.  The undignified position added venom to the smart of the disregarded affection and the suspense as to the future, and Jock had much to endure after every disappointment, though Allen clung to him rather than to any one else because of his impression that Elvira’s real preference was unchanged (such as it was), and that these failures were rather due to her friend than to herself.

This became more clear through Mrs. Evelyn.  Her family had connections in common with the Dowager Lady Clanmacnalty, and the two ladies met at the house of their relation.  Listening in the way of duty to the old Scottish Countess’s profuse communications, she heard what explained a good deal.

Did she know the Spanish girl who was with Flora-—a handsome creature and a great heiress?  Oh yes; she had presented her.  Strange affair!  Flora understood that there was a deep plot for appropriating the young lady and her fortune.