CHAPTER IX.
Time had advanced to midnight, after the reading of the Will--and Ovid was at home.
The silence of the quiet street in which he lived was only disturbed by the occasional rolling of carriage wheels, and by dance-music from the house of one of his neighbours who was giving a ball.

He sat at his writing-table, thinking.

Honest self-examination had laid out the state of his mind before him like a map, and had shown him, in its true proportions, the new interest that filled his life.
Of that interest he was now the willing slave.

If he had not known his mother to be with her, he would have gone back to Carmina when the lawyer left the house.

As it was, he had sent a message upstairs, inviting himself to dinner, solely for the purpose of seeing Carmina again--and he had been bitterly disappointed when he heard that Mr.and Mrs.Gallilee were engaged, and that his cousin would take tea in her room.