He came back to consciousness in darkness through which struggled no gleam of light. He did not know where he was until he staggered out from behind the stifling draperies and switched on the light with shaking hands. Then he found himself in his own dining-room. There were no glasses on the table—the spring bar of the liquor stand was in its place, the brandy decanter was, as he remembered to have left it, half full. He found his candle on the sideboard and lighted it, and went into the hall. The hall-door was barred and bolted.

“Thank God, I have been dreaming!� said Ponsonby, and went upstairs.

There she lay—a breathing picture of reposeful innocence—fast asleep. Ponsonby stooped and kissed the hair that flooded her pillow and invaded his own, and silently swore by all his deities that he would never go to another City dinner as long as he lived. Before he crept into bed he knelt down—a thing he had not done since he was a boy—and said awkwardly, “O God, I’m glad it was a dream! Thank you!�

He slept the sleep of the weary, and rose, not a giant, it is true, but very much refreshed. He dandered down to the breakfast table in a leisurely way, humming a tune. As he shook out his newspaper, the absurdity and improbability of his recent vision struck him for the first time; he laughed until he ached. Then he dropped his newspaper, and stooped to pick it up. Something bright that lay upon the carpet under the table attracted his notice. The man put forth his hand and took it, and his ruddy morning face underwent a strange and ghastly alteration. For the thing was a long steel bonnet pin, with a vulgar blue glass head! Men have died suddenly of pin pricks before now.

But Ponsonby’s tortures are lingering. He is alive still, and she is still Mrs. Ponsonby. He has never spoken—the Secret of the Blue Glass Pin is hidden from the woman who walks Life’s path with him. But sometimes she is haunted by a dreadful Doubt, and at all times he is bestridden by an overwhelming Certainty.

A FAT GIRL’S LOVE STORY

In Three Parts

I

THE first thing I remember being told is that I was a Parksop, and the second that it was worth while living, if only to have that name. Some years after, it dawned upon me that we had got very little else.

Father was a landed proprietor upon a reduced scale, and a parent on a large one. There were twelve of us, counting Prenderby, who had passed into the Army a few years previously, and passed out of it later on at the unanimous request of his superior officers. Father cut him off with a shilling—which he forgot to send him—and sternly forbade him to bear the name of Parksop any more. He has done well since, and attributes his rise in life entirely to that deprivation. Nobody ever writes to Prenderby except Charlotte.