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Some readers, no doubt–though possibly few of our heroine’s sex–will smile scornfully at this crumpled rose-leaf agony, this tempest in a Dresden teacup; and the writer is not concerned to deny that the situation has its ludicrous side.

But, for a girl brought up as Ella Hylton had been, in an artistic milieu, her eye insensibly trained to love all that was beautiful in colour and form, to be almost morbidly sensitive to ugliness and vulgarity–it was a very real and bitter struggle, a hard-won victory to come to such a decision as she formed. Life, Heaven knows, contains worse trials and deeper tragedies than this; but at least Ella’s happy life had as yet known no harder.

And, so far, she must be given the credit of having conquered.

Resolution is, no doubt, half the battle. Unfortunately, Ella’s resolution, though she hardly perceived this at present, could not be effected by one isolated and final act, but by a long chain of daily and hourly forbearances, the first break in which would undo all that had gone before.

How she bore the test we are going to see.

She woke the next morning to a sense that her life had somehow lost its savour; the exaltation of her resolve overnight had gone off and left her spirits flat and dead; but she came down, nevertheless, determined to be staunch and true to George under all provocations.

‘Have you and George decided when you would like your wedding to be?’ asked her mother, after breakfast, ‘because we ought to have the invitations printed very soon.’

‘Not yet,’ faltered Ella, and the words might have passed either as an answer or an appeal.

‘I think it should be some time before the end of next month, or people will be going out of town.’

‘I suppose so,’ was the reply, so listlessly given that Mrs. Hylton glanced keenly at her daughter.

‘What do you feel about it yourself, Ella?’

‘I? oh, I–I’ve no feeling. Perhaps, if we waited–no, it doesn’t matter–let it be when you and George wish, mother, please!’

Mrs. Hylton gave a sharp, annoyed little laugh: ‘Really, my dear, if you can’t get up any more interest in it than that, I think it would certainly be wiser to wait!’

It was more than indifference that Ella felt–a wild aversion to beginning the new life that but lately had seemed so mysteriously sweet and strange; she was frightened by it, ashamed of it, but she could not help herself. She made no answer, nor did Mrs. Hylton again refer to the subject.

But Ella’s worst tribulations had yet to come. That afternoon, as she and her mother and Flossie were sitting in the drawing-room, ‘Mrs. and the Miss Chapmans’ were announced. Evidently they had deemed it incumbent on them to pay a state visit as soon as possible after Ella’s return.

Ella returned their effusive greetings as dutifully as she could. She had never succeeded in cultivating a very lively affection for them; to-day she found them barely endurable.

Mrs. Chapman was a stout, dewlapped old lady, with dull eyes and pachydermatous folds in her face. She had a husky voice and a funereal manner. Jessie, her eldest daughter, was not altogether uncomely in a commonplace way: she was dark-haired, high-coloured, loud-voiced–generally sprightly and voluble and overpowering; she was in such a hurry to speak that her words tripped one another up, and she had a meaningless and, to Ella, highly irritating little laugh.

Carrie was plain and colourless, content to admire and echo her sister.

After some conversation on Ella’s Continental experiences, Jessie suddenly, as Ella’s uneasy instinct foresaw, turned to Mrs. Hylton. ‘Of course, Ella told you what a surprise she had at Campden Hill yesterday? Weren’t you electrified?’

‘No doubt I should have been,’ said Mrs. Hylton, who detested Jessie, ‘only Ella did not think fit to mention it.’

‘Oh, I wonder at that! I hope I wasn’t going to betray the secrets of the prison-house?’ Jessie was fond of using stock phrases to give lightness and sparkle to her conversation. ‘Ella, the idea of your keeping it all to yourself, you sly puss! But tell me–would you ever have believed Tumps’–his sisters called George ‘Tumps’–‘could be capable of such independent behaviour?’