He had gone down on his knees and kissed her feet, and had been so abject, so pitiful that she had given him some flowers she was wearing.

And he had sworn to dedicate the rest of his life to being worthy of her condescension.

Poor lad! She wondered--for the first time since that afternoon--what had become of him.

There had been others; a third cousin who still wrote to her from Egypt, sending her presents that perhaps he could ill afford, and whom she answered about once a year.

And promising young men she had met at Cambridge, ready, the felt instinctively, to fall down and worship her.