So Honor asked herself from day to day, and she read her little story in the lines:
"We spoke not of our love,
But in our mutual silence it was felt
In its intense, absorbing happiness."
And after all those days when she had been building up her fairy castle, there came the crisis of to-day, which shook the faith on which her edifice was built, and laid it in shattered ruins at her feet. Yet, with this new-born grief at her heart she must go down among those who cared not, to laugh and be merry, although her voice in her own ears sounded like a long lonely sigh.
She left her room half-an-hour afterwards to repair to the drawing-room, but even as she walked along the corridors, now half shrouded in the shadows of evening, she expected to be surprised at every turning by the sudden appearance of Guy. She felt lonelier now though back among the scenes for which she had longed with a mighty longing, when hundreds of railroad miles had separated her from them. And then she grew impatient with herself for giving in to appearances. She who had prided herself so much on her courage to give up so easily now. Stirred by this new reflection, she ran lightly down the broad oaken stairway and entered the drawing-room, her face suffused with smiles.
CHAPTER XVII.
"It is one thing to be tempted,
Another thing to fall."
—Shakespeare.
The clock of the Parliament Tower was pealing out the last stroke of four, and almost simultaneously there emerged from all three Buildings, young men, old men and middle-aged men, all looking as weary and hard-worked as civil servants ought to look.
They did not turn back once to gaze on the spot where the long, dreary hours had been spent, outside that office door life assumed another and an entirely different phase for the government clerk. Even the memory of the lawyer's clerks and "duns" from various parts of the city were left buried within these sacred precints until the next day, and one and all with a light step wended their way down the Square towards Sparks street.
Among the crowd might be noticed a group of young men that are loitering down the broad steps of the Eastern Block, most of them carry light canes and all of them are smoking good cigars. As I have said they are young men every one of them, and they are fast young men every one of them, and they are likewise inconveniently short of money are these good-looking fast young men. In fact they are a great many things that are too numerous and too uninteresting to mention.
But to Miss Dash and her friend Miss McArgent, who are walking up Wellington street at this moment, they are the most important group of individuals in the whole human menagerie.