Mrs.Frankland, as she called herself, received him in the large music-and-dancing room on the first-floor front, and not in any private little parlour as he had expected.

This cast a distressingly business-like colour over their first meeting after so many years of severance.

The woman he had wronged stood before him, well-dressed, even to his metropolitan eyes, and her manner as she came up to him was dignified even to hardness.

She certainly was not glad to see him.

But what could he expect after a neglect of twenty years! 'How do you do, Mr.Millborne ?' she said cheerfully, as to any chance caller.