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 only saw his back as he walked slowly along. Every now and again he would stop and look round him as though admiring the place and the views as the openings between the houses allowed him to see the surrounding country. Once or twice she could see him look out under his eyebrows as though watching the hotel without appearing to do so. Presently he turned the corner of the next street to the left, moving as though he wished to go all round the hotel.

She sat down and thought, her heart beating hard. Her face was covered with both her hands. Forehead and cheeks and neck were deeply flushed; and when she took away her hands her eyes were bright and seemed to glow. She seemed filled with happiness, but all the same looked impossibly demure; as is woman's nature, playing to convention even when alone.

Before she left her room she had changed her clothes, putting on after several experiments the frock which she thought the most becoming. She did not send for her maid, but did everything for herself; even to hanging up the discarded frocks. Then she went back to the sitting room and took as before her seat at the window, keeping however a little more in the background. She wanted to see rather than to be seen. With her eyes seemingly on her book, but in reality sweeping under her lashes the approaches to the hotel like searchlights, she sat quite quietly for some time. At length the eyes suddenly fell for an instant under an uncontrollable wave of diffidence; she had seen Him pass into the garden opposite to the hotel and go secretively behind some lilac bushes opposite the doorway. But after that one droop of the eyes, there was scarce even the flicker of an eyelid; she did not want to lose a single glimpse of him.

Sitting by the window, where he could see her, for a full hour until her father appeared, she thought over the new phase of the matter. If she had ever had any real doubt as to whether Mr. Richard Hardy loved her it was all