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176 “Not in her!” cried Daintree, devoutly.

And he posted to the City that afternoon, returning with a beautiful brooch, which he presented to Claire with humility unalloyed.

“A diamond pendant you would not accept from me; alas, nor yet a ring!” he sighed. “But this trifle I think you will—in memory of this morning.”

For though he bored her with his poetry, he was very careful not to inflict upon her a second declaration of his love, until his cunning told him that the favourable time was ripe.

So Claire lost her chance, and sank deeper and deeper yet into the toils.

One salve her conscience demanded and obtained. She knew now what was coming better than he did. And she tried day and night to forget poor Tom, and to love the man she needs must marry in the end.

But the end was not yet; for the man had made up his mind to a long, deliberate siege; and he now set about it with all the tenacity and all the ingenuity which were central traits in his complex nature.

Those were the days of Almack’s, and of a hard-and-fast Society whose pale Nicholas Harding had never quite scaled. To give him, so to speak, a leg up, Daintree went once more among old family friends, and was actually intriguing with one of the six terrible ladies who guarded the doors of Almack’s, in order to secure tickets for one of those historic assemblies at Willis’s Rooms, when the King’s death, on June 20th, put an end to all festivities. Daintree ground his teeth at having to abandon what he had deemed a potent engine of assault. Claire had shown pleasure at the prospect; its destruction seemed a real blow to her, but was actually a relief.