Long before the ‘Social Reformer’ had fully made its mark in the world, another event had happened of no less importance to some of the chief actors in the little drama whose natural termination it seemed to form. While the pamphlet and the paper were in course of maturation, Arthur Berkeley had been running daily in and out of the house in Wilton Place in what Lady Exmoor several times described as a positively disgraceful and unseemly manner. (‘What Hilda can mean,’ her ladyship observed to her husband more than once, ‘by encouraging that odd young man’s extraordinary advances in the way she does is really more than I can understand even in her.’) But when the Le Bretons were fairly launched at last on the favourable flood of full prosperity, both Hilda and Arthur began to feel as though they had suddenly been deprived of a very pleasant common interest. After all, benevolent counsel on behalf of other people is not so entirely innocent and impersonal in certain cases as it seems to be at first sight. ‘Do you know, Lady Hilda,’ Berkeley said one afternoon, when he had come to pay, as it were, a sort of farewell visit, on the final completion of their joint schemes for restoring happiness to the home of the Le Bretons, ‘our intercourse together has been very delightful, and I’m quite sorry to think that in future we must see so much less of one another than we’ve been in the habit of doing for the last month or so.’

Hilda looked at him straight and said in her own frank unaffected fashion, ‘So am I, Mr. Berkeley, very sorry, very sorry indeed.’

Arthur looked back at her once more, and their eyes met. His look was full of admiration, and Hilda saw it. She moved a little uneasily upon the ottoman, waiting apparently as though she expected Arthur to say something else. But Arthur looked at her long and steadfastly, and said nothing.

At last he seemed to wake from his reverie, and make up his mind for a desperate venture. Could he be mistaken? Could he have read either record wrong—his own heart, or Hilda’s eyes? No, no, both of them spoke to him too plainly and evidently. His heart was fluttering like a wind-shaken aspen-leaf; and Hilda’s eyes were dimming visibly with a tender moisture. Yes, yes, yes, there was no misreading possible. He knew he loved her! he knew she loved him!

Bending over towards where Hilda sat, he took her hand in his dreamily: and Hilda let him take it without a movement. Then he looked deeply into her eyes, and felt a curious speechlessness coming over him, deep down in the ball of his throat.

‘Lady Hilda,’ he began at last with an effort, in a low voice, not wholly untinged with natural timidity, ‘Lady Hilda, is a working man’s son——’

Hilda looked back at him with a sudden look of earnest deprecation. ‘Not that way, Mr. Berkeley,’ she said quietly: ‘not that way, please: you’ll hurt me if you do: you know that’s not the way I look at the matter. Why not simply “Hilda”?’

Berkeley clasped her hand eagerly and raised it to his lips. ‘Hilda, then,’ he said, kissing it twice over. ‘It SHALL be Hilda.’

Hilda rose and stood before him erect in all her queenlike beauty. ‘So now that’s settled,’ she said, with a vain endeavour to control her tears of joy. ‘Don’t let’s talk about it any more, now; I can’t bear to talk about it: there’s nothing to arrange, Arthur. Whenever you like will suit me. But, oh, I’m so happy, so happy, so happy—I never thought I could be so happy.’

‘Nor I,’ Arthur answered, holding her hand a moment in his tenderly.

‘How strange,’ Hilda said again, after a minute’s delicious silence; ‘it’s the poor Le Bretons who have brought us two thus together. And yet, they were both once our dearest rivals. YOU were in love with Edie Le Breton: I was half in love with Ernest Le Breton: and now—why, now, Arthur, I DO believe we’re both utterly in love with one another. What a curious little comedy of errors!’

‘And yet only a few months ago it came very near being a tragedy, rather,’ Arthur put in softly.

‘Never mind!’ Hilda answered in her brightest and most joyous tone, as she wiped the joyful tears from her eyes. ‘It isn’t a tragedy, now, after all, Arthur, and all’s well that ends well!’

When the Countess heard of Hilda’s determination—Hilda didn’t pretend to go through the domestic farce of asking her mother’s consent to her approaching marriage—she said that so far as she was concerned a more shocking or un-Christian piece of conduct on the part of a well-brought-up girl had never yet been brought to her knowledge. To refuse Lord Connemara, and then go and marry the son of a common cobbler! But the Earl only puffed away vigorously at his cheroot, and observed philosophically that for his part he just considered himself jolly well out of it. This young fellow Berkeley mightn’t be a man of the sort of family Hilda would naturally expect to marry into, but he was decently educated and in good society, and above all, a gentleman, you know, don’t you know: and, hang it all, in these days that’s really everything. Besides, Berkeley was making a pot of money out of these operas of his, the Earl understood, and as he had always expected that Hilda’d marry some penniless painter or somebody of that sort, and be a perpetual drag upon the family exchequer, he really didn’t see why they need trouble their heads very much about it. By George, if it came to that, he rather congratulated himself that the girl hadn’t taken it into her nonsensical head to run away with the groom or the stable-boy! As to Lynmouth, he merely remarked succinctly in his own dialect, ‘Go it, Hilda, go it, my beauty! You always were a one-er, you know, and it’s my belief you always will be.’

It was somewhere about the same time that Ronald Le Breton, coming back gladdened in soul from a cheerful talk with Ernest, called round of an evening in somewhat unwonted exultation at Selah’s lodgings. ‘Selah,’ he said to her calmly, as she met him at the door to let him in herself, ‘I want to have a little talk with you.’

‘What is it about, Ronald?’ Selah asked, with a perfect consciousness in her own mind of what the subject he wished to discourse about was likely to be.

‘Why, Selah,’ Ronald went on in his quiet, matter-of-fact, unobtrusive manner, ‘do you know, I think we may fairly consider Ernest and Edie out of danger now.’

‘I hope so, Ronald,’ Selah answered imperturbably. ‘I’ve no doubt your brother’ll get along all right in future, and I’m sure at least that he’s getting stronger, for he looks ten per cent. better than he did three months ago.’

‘Well, Selah!’

‘Well, Ronald!’

‘Why, in that case, you see, your objection falls to the ground. There can be no possible reason on either side why you should any longer put off marrying me. We needn’t consider Edie now; and you can’t have any reasonable doubt that I want to marry you for your own sake this time.’

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