stung this night by the thought that, if he had hardened and grown careless and unbelieving, the chances were that it was she herself who had helped to bring about the change for the worse.

31

The two young men, Lyon and his friend, spending that night together, had a little conversation on the subject of their entertainment, and it came to pass in this wise.

Accompanying Anstruthers to his chambers, Lyon, though by no means a sentimental individual, carried Miss Crespigny’s gold and purple pansy in his button-hole, and finding it there when he changed his dress coat for one of his friend’s dressing gowns, he took it out, and put it in a small slender vase upon the table. 32

32

Anstruthers had flung himself into an easy-chair, with his chibouque, and through the wreaths of smoke, ascending from the fragrant weed, he saw what the young man was doing.

“Where did you get that?” he demanded, abruptly.

“It is one of those things Miss Crespigny wore,” was the modestly triumphant reply. “You saw them on her dress, and in her hair, and on her fan. This is a real one, though, out of her bouquet. I believe they call them heart’s-ease.”

“Heart’s-ease be ——,” began Anstruthers, roughly, but he checked himself in time. “She is the sort of a woman to wear heart’s-ease!” he added, with a sardonic laugh. “She ought to wear heart’s-ease, and violets, and lilies, and snowdrops, and wild roses in the bud,” with a more bitter laugh for each flower he named. “Such fresh, innocent things suit women of her stamp.”

“I say,” said Lyon, staring at his sneering face, amazedly, “what is the matter? You talk as if you had a spite against her. What’s up?”

Anstruther’s sneer only seemed to deepen in its intensity.

“A spite!” he echoed. 33“What is the matter? Oh, nothing—nothing of any consequence. Only I wish she had given her heart’s-ease to me, or I wish you would give it to me, that I might show you what I advise you to do with the pretty things such creatures give you. Toss it into the fire, old fellow, and let it scorch, and blacken, and writhe, as if it was a living thing in torment. Or fling it on the ground, and set your heel upon it, and grind it out of sight.”

33

“I don’t see what good that 

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