Just how this meeting began Alfred Randal could never afterwards quite recall. He could remember in vivid details the first picture of this superb woman as she arose to greet him, but then, just then, the love of his youth that had seemed to sleep under an anæsthetic for so many years, suddenly woke into glorious life, and gushed into his heart and overran his senses with its marvellous vitality. What transpired thereafter was provokingly indistinct. He remembered being presented to the aunt, Mrs. Beaufort, and her astonishment, and her incredulous query as to whether he lived in this “terrible country” to which he had replied that he could not be said to live, but that it was his part to exist in this rather primitive land. He remembered that the three sat together in the drawing-room of the coach and talked of his return to New York, of his ultimate success, and his assured future. He remembered also that for the time he had forgotten the grave difficulty in the way of such a future and his stern decision made but a few minutes before. He remembered also that through it all he had been very foolish and
