I'll try--I don't understand." Then as though she was aware that she was fighting the whole room which had already almost entrapped her and that the fight was too much for her, she went.
When she came to her own room and thought about her invitation she wished, with a sudden change of mood, that she had a pretty frock or two.

She would have loved to have been grand to-night, and now the best that she could do was to add her coral necklace and a little gold brooch that years ago her father had given her, to the black dress that she was already wearing.

She realised, with a strange little pang of loneliness, that she had not had one evening's fun since her arrival in London--no, not one--and she would not have captured to-night had Aunt Anne been able to prevent it.
Then as her mind returned back to her uncle she felt with a throb of excited anticipation that perhaps after all this evening was to prove the turning-point of her life.

Her little escape into the streets, her posting of the letter, had been followed so immediately by Uncle Mathew's visit, and now this invitation! "No one can keep me if I want to go," and the old cuckoo-clock outside seemed to tick in reply: "Can no one keep her if she wants to go ?" She finished her preparations; as she fastened the coral necklace round her neck the face of Martin Warlock was suddenly before her.

He had been perhaps at her elbow all day.
"I like him and I think he likes me," she said to the mirror.