And then she thought of the strange difference of fate that gave to this Charlotte Halliday, with her rich stepfather and comfortable surroundings, a penniless soldier of fortune for a lover, while to her, the spendthrift adventurer's daughter, came a wealthy suitor.
"Will hers be the dinner of herbs, and mine the stalled ox?" she thought. "Ah, Heaven forbid! Why is it so difficult to love wisely, so easy to love too well?"
She remembered the cynical French proverb, "When we can not have what we love, we must love what we have." But the cynical proverb brought her no comfort.
She went back to Bayswater with a strange bewildered feeling; after having promised her father to go to Omega Street whenever he sent for her. There was no actual pain in her mind, no passionate desire to recall her promise, no dread horror of the step to which she had pledged herself. The feeling that oppressed her was the sense that such a step should have been the spontaneous election of her grateful heart, proud of a good man's preference, instead of a weak submission to a father's helplessness.
Book the Fifth.
THE FIRST ACT OF MR. SHELDON'S DRAMA.
CHAPTER I.
TAKEN BY STORM.
Two days after her interview with Gustave Lenoble, Miss Paget received a brief note from her father, summoning her again to Omega Street.
"He has not gone back to Normandy," wrote the Captain.