CHAPTER V.
How Three Gentlemen Acted for the Best.
The schemers schemed and the waiters upon events waited with considerable patience, but although the days wore on, the situation showed little signs of speedy development.

Matters were in fact in a rather puzzling position.

The friendship and intimacy between Claudia and Stafford continued to increase.

Eugene, whether in penitence or in pique, had turned with renewed zeal to his proper duties, and was no longer content to allow Kate to be monopolized by Haddington.

The latter's attentions had indeed been in danger of becoming too marked, and it is, perhaps, not uncharitable to attribute Kate's apparent avoidance of them as much to considerations of expediency as of principle.