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It was he who taught the butler to say, “My lady is served,” and who insisted on handing her ladyship in to dinner. He seldom spoke to her, but when he did it was with the most powerful respect; and he never let her quit the apartment without rising in the most stately manner to open the door, and making an elegant bow at her egress. At Eton he was called Miss Crawley; and there, I am sorry to say, his younger brother Rawdon used to lick him violently. But though his parts were not brilliant, he made up for his lack of talent by meritorious industry, and was never known, during eight years at school, to be subject to that punishment which it is generally thought none but a cherub can escape. At college his career was of course highly creditable. And here he prepared himself for public life, into which he was to be introduced by the patronage of his grandfather, Lord Binkie, by studying the ancient and modern orators with great assiduity, and by speaking unceasingly at the debating societies. But though he had a fine flux of words, and delivered his little voice with great pomposity and pleasure to himself, and never advanced any sentiment or opinion which was not perfectly trite and stale, and supported by a Latin quotation; yet he failed somehow, in spite of a mediocrity which ought to have insured any man a success. He did not even get the prize poem, which all his friends said he was sure of. After leaving college he became Private Secretary to Lord Binkie, and was then appointed Attache to the Legation at Pumpernickel, which post he filled with perfect honour, and brought home despatches, consisting of Strasburg pie, to the Foreign Minister of the day. After remaining ten years Attache (several years after the lamented Lord Binkie’s demise), and finding the advancement slow, he at length gave up the diplomatic service in some disgust, and began to turn country gentleman.

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Had your dinner, I suppose? It is not too warm for you? Like a drop of beer?” “Where is Sir Pitt Crawley?” said Miss Sharp majestically. “He, he! I’m Sir Pitt Crawley. Reklect you owe me a pint for bringing down your luggage. He, he! Ask Tinker if I aynt. Mrs. Tinker, Miss Sharp; Miss Governess, Mrs. Charwoman. Ho, ho!” The lady addressed as Mrs. Tinker at this moment made her appearance with a pipe and a paper of tobacco, for which she had been despatched a minute before Miss Sharp’s arrival; and she handed the articles over to Sir Pitt, who had taken his seat by the fire. “Where’s the farden?” said he. “I gave you three halfpence. Where’s the change, old Tinker?” “There!” replied Mrs. Tinker, flinging down the coin; it’s only baronets as cares about farthings.” “A farthing a day is seven shillings a year,” answered the M.P.; “seven shillings a year is the interest of seven guineas. Take care of your farthings, old Tinker, and your guineas will come quite nat’ral.” “You may be sure it’s Sir Pitt Crawley, young woman,” said Mrs. Tinker, surlily; “because he looks to his farthings. You’ll know him better afore long.” “And like me none the worse, Miss Sharp,” said the old gentleman, with an air almost of politeness. “I must be just before I’m generous.” “He never gave away a farthing in his life,” growled Tinker. “Never, and never will: it’s against my principle. Go and get another chair from the kitchen, Tinker, if you want to sit down; and then we’ll have a bit of supper.” Presently the baronet plunged a fork into the saucepan on the fire, and withdrew from the pot a piece of tripe and an onion, which he divided into pretty equal portions, and of which he partook with Mrs. Tinker. “You see, Miss Sharp, when I’m not here Tinker’s on board wages: when I’m in town she dines with the family. Haw! haw! I’m glad Miss Sharp’s not hungry, ain’t you, Tink?” And they fell to upon their frugal supper. After supper Sir Pitt Crawley began to smoke his pipe; and when it became quite dark, he lighted the rushlight in the tin candlestick, and producing from an interminable pocket a huge mass of papers, began reading them, and putting them in order. “I’m here on law business, my dear, and that’s how it happens that I shall have the pleasure of such a pretty travelling companion to-morrow.” “He’s always at law business,” said Mrs. Tinker, taking up the pot of porter. “Drink and drink about,” said the Baronet. “Yes; my dear, Tinker is quite right: I’ve lost and won more lawsuits than any man in England. Look here at Crawley, Bart. v. Snaffle. I’ll throw him over, or my name’s not Pitt Crawley. Podder and another versus Crawley, Bart. Overseers of Snaily parish against Crawley, Bart. They can’t prove it’s common: I’ll defy ’em; the land’s mine. It no more belongs to the parish than it does to you or Tinker here. I’ll beat ’em, if it cost me a thousand guineas. Look over the papers; you may if you like, my dear. Do you write a good hand? I’ll make you useful when we’re at Queen’s Crawley, depend on it, Miss Sharp. Now the dowager’s dead I want some one.” “She was as bad as he,” said Tinker. “She took the law of every one of her tradesmen; and turned away forty-eight footmen in four year.” “She was close—very close,” said the Baronet, simply; “but she was a valyble woman to me, and saved me a steward.”—And in this confidential strain, and much to the amusement of the new-comer, the conversation continued for a considerable time. Whatever Sir Pitt Crawley’s qualities might be, good or bad, he did not make the least disguise of them. He talked of himself incessantly, sometimes in the coarsest and vulgarest Hampshire accent; sometimes adopting the tone of a man of the world. And so, with injunctions to Miss Sharp to be ready at five in the morning, he bade her good night. “You’ll sleep with Tinker to-night,” he said; “it’s a big bed, and there’s room for two. Lady Crawley died in it. Good night.” Sir Pitt went off after this benediction, and the solemn Tinker, rushlight in hand, led the way up the great bleak stone stairs, past the great dreary drawing-room doors, with the handles muffled up in paper, into the great front bedroom, where Lady Crawley had slept her last. The bed and chamber were so funereal and gloomy, you might have fancied, not only that Lady Crawley died in the room, but that her ghost inhabited it. Rebecca sprang about the apartment, however, with the greatest liveliness, and had peeped into the huge wardrobes, and the closets, and the cupboards, and tried the drawers which were locked, and examined the dreary pictures and toilette appointments, while the old charwoman was saying her prayers. “I shouldn’t like to sleep in this yeer bed without a good conscience, Miss,” said the old woman. “There’s room for us and a half-dozen of ghosts in it,” says Rebecca. “Tell me all about Lady Crawley and Sir Pitt Crawley, and everybody, my dear Mrs. Tinker.” As the only endowments with which Nature had gifted Lady Crawley were those of pink cheeks and a white skin, and as she had no sort of character, nor talents, nor opinions, nor occupations, nor amusements, nor that vigour of soul and ferocity of temper which often falls to the lot of entirely foolish women, her hold upon Sir Pitt’s affections was not very great. Her roses faded out of her cheeks, and the pretty freshness left her figure after the birth of a couple of children, and she became a mere machine in her husband’s house of no more use than the late Lady Crawley’s grand piano. Being a light- complexioned woman, she wore light clothes, as most blondes will, and appeared, in preference, in draggled sea- green, or slatternly sky-blue. She worked that worsted day and night, or other pieces like it. She had counterpanes in the course of a few years to all the beds in Crawley. She had a small flower-garden, for which she had rather an affection; but beyond this no other like or disliking. When her husband was rude to her she was apathetic: whenever he struck her she cried. She had not character enough to take to drinking, and moaned about, slipshod and in curl-papers all day. 0 Vanity Fair— Vanity Fair! This might have been, but for you, a cheery lass—Peter Butt and Rose a happy man and wife, in a snug farm, with a hearty family; and an honest portion of pleasures, cares, hopes and struggles—but a title and a coach and four are toys more precious than happiness in Vanity Fair: and if Harry the Eighth or Bluebeard were alive now, and wanted a tenth wife, do you suppose he could not get the prettiest girl that shall be presented this season?

And Dobbin’s spirit rose with his altered circumstances. He made wonderful advances in scholastic learning. The superb Cuff himself, at whose condescension Dobbin could only blush and wonder, helped him on with his Latin verses; “coached” him in play-hours: carried him triumphantly out of the little-boy class into the middle- sized form; and even there got a fair place for him. It was discovered, that although dull at classical learning, at mathematics he was uncommonly quick. To the contentment of all he passed third in algebra, and got a French prize-book at the public Midsummer examination. You should have seen his mother’s face when Telemaque (that delicious romance) was presented to him by the Doctor in the face of the whole school and the parents and company, with an inscription to Gulielmo Dobbin. All the boys clapped hands in token of applause and sympathy. His blushes, his stumbles, his awkwardness, and the number of feet which he crushed as he went back to his place, who shall describe or calculate? Old Dobbin, his father, who now respected him for the first time, gave him two guineas publicly; most of which he spent in a general tuck-out for the school: and he came back in a tail-coat after the holidays. Dobbin was much too modest a young fellow to suppose that this happy change in all his circumstances arose from his own generous and manly disposition: he chose, from some perverseness, to attribute his good fortune to the sole agency and benevolence of little George Osborne, to whom henceforth he vowed such a love and affection as is only felt by children—such an affection, as we read in the charming fairy-book, uncouth Orson had for splendid young Valentine his conqueror. He flung himself down at little Osborne’s feet, and loved him. Even before they were acquainted, he had admired Osborne in secret. Now he was his valet, his dog, his man Friday. He believed Osborne to be the possessor of every perfection, to be the handsomest, the bravest, the most active, the cleverest, the most generous of created boys. He shared his money with him: bought him uncountable presents of knives, pencil-cases, gold seals, toffee, Little Warblers, and romantic books, with large coloured pictures of knights and robbers, in many of which latter you might read inscriptions to George Sedley Osborne, Esquire, from his attached friend William Dobbin —the which tokens of homage George received very graciously, as became his superior merit.

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The paternal laugh was echoed by Joseph, who thought the joke capital. The ladies only smiled a little. They thought poor Rebecca suffered too much. She would have liked to choke old Sedley, but she swallowed her mortification as well as she had the abominable curry before it, and as soon as she could speak, said, with a comical, good-humoured air, “I ought to have remembered the pepper which the Princess of Persia puts in the cream- tarts in the Arabian Nights. Do you put cayenne into your cream-tarts in India, sir?” Old Sedley began to laugh, and thought Rebecca was a good-humoured girl. Joseph simply said, “Cream- tarts, Miss? Our cream is very bad in Bengal. We generally use goats’ milk; and, ’gad, do you know, I’ve got to prefer it!” “You won’t like everything from India now, Miss Sharp,” said the old gentleman; but when the ladies had retired after dinner, the wily old fellow said to his son, “Have a care, Joe; that girl is setting her cap at you.” “Pooh! nonsense!” said Joe, highly flattered. “I recollect, sir, there was a girl at Dumdum, a daughter of Cutler of the Artillery, and afterwards married to Lance, the surgeon, who made a dead set at me in the year ’4—at me and Mulligatawney, whom I mentioned to you before dinner—a devilish good fellow Mulligatawney— he’s a magistrate at Budgebudge, and sure to be in council in five years. Well, sir, the Artillery gave a ball, and Quintin, of the King’s 14th, said to me, ‘Sedley,’ said he, ‘I bet you thirteen to ten that Sophy Cutler hooks either you or Mulligatawney before the rains.’ ‘Done,’ says I; and egad, sir—this claret’s very good. Adamson’s or Carbonell’s?” A slight snore was the only reply: the honest stockbroker was asleep, and so the rest of Joseph’s story was lost for that day. But he was always exceedingly communicative in a man’s party, and has told this delightful tale many scores of times to his apothecary, Dr. Gollop, when he came to inquire about the liver and the blue-pill. Being an invalid, Joseph Sedley contented himself with a bottle of claret besides his Madeira at dinner, and he managed a couple of plates full of strawberries and cream, and twenty-four little rout cakes that were lying neglected in a plate near him, and certainly (for novelists have the privilege of knowing everything) he thought a great deal about the girl upstairs. “A nice, gay, merry young creature,” thought he to himself. “How she looked at me when I picked up her handkerchief at dinner! She dropped it twice. Who’s that singing in the drawing-room? ‘Gad! shall I go up and see?” But his modesty came rushing upon him with uncontrollable force. His father was asleep: his hat was in the hall: there was a hackney-coach standing hard by in Southampton Row. “I’ll go and see the Forty Thieves,” said he, “and Miss Decamp’s dance”; and he slipped away gently on the pointed toes of his boots, and disappeared, without waking his worthy parent. “There goes Joseph,” said Amelia, who was looking from the open windows of the drawing-room, while Rebecca was singing at the piano. “Miss Sharp has frightened him away,” said Mrs. Sedley. “Poor Joe, why will he be so shy?” “I think that will do for him,” Figs said, as his opponent dropped as neatly on the green as I have seen Jack Spot’s ball plump into the pocket at billiards; and the fact is, when time was called, Mr. Reginald Cuff was not able, or did not choose, to stand up again. And now all the boys set up such a shout for Figs as would have made you think he had been their darling champion through the whole battle; and as absolutely brought Dr. Swishtail out of his study, curious to know the cause of the uproar. He threatened to flog Figs violently, of course; but Cuff, who had come to himself by this time, and was washing his wounds, stood up and said, “It’s my fault, sir—not Figs’—not Dobbin’s. I was bullying a little boy; and he served me right.” By which magnanimous speech he not only saved his conqueror a whipping, but got back all his ascendancy over the boys which his defeat had nearly cost him. Young Osborne wrote home to his parents an account of the transaction. Sugarcane House, Richmond, March, 18— DEAR MAMA,—I hope you are quite well. I should be much obliged to you to send me a cake and five shillings. There has been a fight here between Cuff & Dobbin. Cuff, you know, was the Cock of the School. They fought thirteen rounds, and Dobbin Licked. So Cuff is now Only Second Cock. The fight was about me. Cuff was licking me for breaking a bottle of milk, and Figs wouldn’t stand it. We call him Figs because his father is a Grocer—Figs & Rudge, Thames St., City—I think as he fought for me you ought to buy your Tea & Sugar at his father’s. Cuff goes home every Saturday, but can’t this, because he has 2 Black Eyes. He has a white Pony to come and fetch him, and a groom in livery on a bay mare. I wish my Papa would let me have a Pony, and I am Your dutiful Son, GEORGE SEDLEY OSBORNE P.S.—Give my love to little Emmy. I am cutting her out a Coach in cardboard. Please not a seed-cake, but a plum-cake. In consequence of Dobbin’s victory, his character rose prodigiously in the estimation of all his schoolfellows, and the name of Figs, which had been a byword of reproach, became as respectable and popular a nickname as any other in use in the school. “After all, it’s not his fault that his father’s a grocer,” George Osborne said, who, though a little chap, had a very high popularity among the Swishtail youth; and his opinion was received with great applause. It was voted low to sneer at Dobbin about this accident of birth. “Old Figs” grew to be a name of kindness and endearment; and the sneak of an usher jeered at him no longer.

My dear Geraldine," protested Anthony, frowning humorously, "do have another cocktail. I annoy him. If I smoke a cigarette he comes into the room sniffing. He's a prig, a bore, and something of a hypocrite. I probably wouldn't be telling you this if I hadn't had a few drinks, but I don't suppose it matters." Geraldine was persistently interested. She held her glass, untasted, between finger and thumb and regarded him with eyes in which there was a touch of awe. "How do you mean a hypocrite?" "Well," said Anthony impatiently, "maybe he's not. But he doesn't like the things that I like, and so, as far as I'm concerned, he's uninteresting." "Hm." Her curiosity seemed, at length, satisfied. She sank back into the sofa and sipped her cocktail. "You're a funny one," she commented thoughtfully. "Does everybody want to marry you because your grandfather is rich?" "They don't--but I shouldn't blame them if they did. Still, you see, I never intend to marry." She scorned this. "You'll fall in love someday. Oh, you will--I know." She nodded wisely. "It'd be idiotic to be overconfident. That's what ruined the Chevalier O'Keefe." "Who was he?" "A creature of my splendid mind. He's my one creation, the Chevalier." "Cra-a-azy!" she murmured pleasantly, using the clumsy rope ladder with which she bridged all gaps and climbed after her mental superiors. Subconsciously she felt that it eliminated distances and brought the person whose imagination had eluded her back within range. "Oh, no!" objected Anthony, "oh, no, Geraldine. You mustn't play the alienist upon the Chevalier. If you feel yourself unable to understand him I won't bring him in. Besides, I should feel a certain uneasiness because of his regrettable reputation." "I guess I can understand anything that's got any sense to it," answered Geraldine a bit testily. "In that case there are various episodes in the life of the Chevalier which might prove diverting." "Well?" "It was his untimely end that caused me to think of him and made him apropos in the conversation. I hate to introduce him end foremost, but it seems inevitable that the Chevalier must back into your life." "Well, what about him? Did he die?" "He did! In this manner. He was an Irishman, Geraldine, a semi-fictional Irishman--the wild sort with a genteel brogue and 'reddish hair.' He was exiled from Erin in the late days of chivalry and, of course, crossed over to France. Now the Chevalier O'Keefe, Geraldine, had, like me, one weakness. He was enormously susceptible to all sorts and conditions of women. Besides being a sentimentalist he was a romantic, a vain fellow, a man of wild passions, a little blind in one eye and almost stone-blind in the other. Now a male roaming the world in this condition is as helpless as a lion without teeth, and in consequence the Chevalier was made utterly miserable for twenty years by a series of women who hated him, used him, bored him, aggravated him, sickened him, spent his money, made a fool of him--in brief, as the world has it, loved him. "This was bad, Geraldine, and as the Chevalier, save for this one weakness, this exceeding susceptibility, was a man of penetration, he decided that he would rescue himself once and for all from these drains upon him. With this purpose he went to a very famous monastery in Champagne called--well, anachronistically known as St. Voltaire's. It was the rule at St. Voltaire's that no monk could descend to the ground story of the monastery so long as he lived, but should exist engaged in prayer and contemplation in one of the four towers, which were called after the four commandments of the monastery rule: Poverty, Chastity, Obedience, and Silence. "When the day came that was to witness the Chevalier's farewell to the world he was utterly happy. He gave all his Greek books to his landlady, and his sword he sent in a golden sheath to the King of France, and all his mementos of Ireland he gave to the young Huguenot who sold fish in the street where he lived.

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the moment had passed. Mrs. Gilbert having climbed the hill of exposition was about to glide swiftly down the ski-jump of collapse. Her eyes were like a blue sky seen through two round, red window-casements. The flesh about her mouth was trembling. And at the moment the door opened, admitting into the room Gloria and the two young ladies lately mentioned. TWO YOUNG WOMEN "Well!" "How do you do, Mrs. Gilbert!" Miss Kane and Miss Jerryl are presented to Mr. Richard Caramel. "This is Dick" (laughter). "I've heard so much about you," says Miss Kane between a giggle and a shout. "How do you do," says Miss Jerryl shyly. Richard Caramel tries to move about as if his figure were better. He is torn between his innate cordiality and the fact that he considers these girls rather common--not at all the Farmover type. Gloria has disappeared into the bedroom. "Do sit down," beams Mrs. Gilbert, who is by now quite herself. "Take off your things." Dick is afraid she will make some remark about the age of his soul, but he forgets his qualms in completing a conscientious, novelist's examination of the two young women. Muriel Kane had originated in a rising family of East Orange. She was short rather than small, and hovered audaciously between plumpness and width. Her hair was black and elaborately arranged. This, in conjunction with her handsome, rather bovine eyes, and her over-red lips, combined to make her resemble Theda Bara, the prominent motion picture actress. People told her constantly that she was a "vampire," and she believed them. She suspected hopefully that they were afraid of her, and she did her utmost under all circumstances to give the impression of danger. An imaginative man could see the red flag that she constantly carried, waving it wildly, beseechingly--and, alas, to little spectacular avail. She was also tremendously timely: she knew the latest songs, all the latest songs--when one of them was played on the phonograph she would rise to her feet and rock her shoulders back and forth and snap her fingers, and if there was no music she would accompany herself by humming. Her conversation was also timely: "I don't care," she would say, "I should worry and lose my figure"--and again: "I can't make my feet behave when I hear that tune. Oh, baby!" Her finger-nails were too long and ornate, polished to a pink and unnatural fever. Her clothes were too tight, too stylish, too vivid, her eyes too roguish, her smile too coy. She was almost pitifully overemphasized from head to foot. The other girl was obviously a more subtle personality. She was an exquisitely dressed Jewess with dark hair and a lovely milky pallor. She seemed shy and vague, and these two qualities accentuated a rather delicate charm that floated about her. Her family were "Episcopalians," owned three smart women's shops along Fifth Avenue, and lived in a magnificent apartment on Riverside Drive. It seemed to Dick, after a few moments, that she was attempting to imitate Gloria--he wondered that people invariably chose inimitable people to imitate. "We had the most _hectic_ time!" Muriel was exclaiming enthusiastically. "There was a crazy woman behind us on the bus. She was absitively, posolutely _nutty_! She kept talking to herself about something she'd like to do to somebody or something. I was _pet_rified, but Gloria simply _wouldn't_ get off." Mrs. Gilbert opened her mouth, properly awed. "Really?" "Oh, she was crazy. But we should worry, she didn't hurt us. Ugly! Gracious! The man across from us said her face ought to be on a night-nurse in a home for the blind, and we all _howled_, naturally, so the man tried to pick us up." Presently Gloria emerged from her bedroom and in unison every eye turned on her. The two girls receded into a shadowy background, unperceived, unmissed. "We've been talking about you," said Dick quickly, "--your mother and I." "Well," said Gloria. A pause--Muriel turned to Dick. "You're a great writer, aren't you?" "I'm a writer," he confessed sheepishly. "I always say," said Muriel earnestly, "that if I ever had time to write down all my experiences it'd make a wonderful book." Rachael giggled sympathetically; Richard Caramel's bow was almost stately. Muriel continued: "But I don't see how you can sit down and do it. And poetry! Lordy, I can't make two lines rhyme. Well, I should worry!" Richard Caramel with difficulty restrained a shout of laughter. Gloria was chewing an amazing gum-drop and staring moodily out the window. Mrs. Gilbert cleared her throat and beamed. "But you see," she said in a sort of universal exposition, "you're not an ancient soul--like Richard." The Ancient Soul breathed a gasp of relief--it was out at last. Then as if she had been considering it for five minutes, Gloria made a sudden announcement: "I'm going to give a party." "Oh, can I come?" cried Muriel with facetious daring. "A dinner. Seven people: Muriel and Rachael and I, and you, Dick, and Anthony, and that man named Noble--I liked him--and Bloeckman." Muriel and Rachael went into soft and purring ecstasies of enthusiasm. Mrs. Gilbert blinked and beamed. With an air of casualness Dick broke in with a question: "Who is this fellow Bloeckman, Gloria?" Scenting a faint hostility, Gloria turned to him. "Joseph Bloeckman? He's the moving picture man. Vice-president of 'Films Par Excellence.' He and father do a lot of business." "Oh!" "Well, will you all come?" They would all come. A date was arranged within the week. Dick rose, adjusted hat, coat, and muffler, and gave out a general smile. "By-by," said Muriel, waving her hand gaily, "call me up some time." Richard Caramel blushed for her. DEPLORABLE END OF THE CHEVALIER O'KEEFE It was Monday and Anthony took Geraldine Burke to luncheon at the Beaux Arts--afterward they went up to his apartment and he wheeled out the little rolling-table that held his supply of liquor, selecting vermouth, gin, and absinthe for a proper stimulant. Geraldine Burke, usher at Keith's, had been an amusement of several months. She demanded so little that he liked her, for since a lamentable affair with a débutante the preceding summer, when he had discovered that after half a dozen kisses a proposal was expected, he had been wary of girls of his own class. It was only too easy to turn a critical eye on their imperfections: some physical harshness or a general lack of personal delicacy--but a girl who was usher at Keith's was approached with a different attitude. One could tolerate qualities in an intimate valet that would be unforgivable in a mere acquaintance on one's social level. Geraldine, curled up at the foot of the lounge, considered him with narrow slanting eyes.

She was on the front porch of the nicest lady in Marietta when she said this, and as she finished she gave a curious little cry and sank in a dead faint to the porch floor. The lady brought her to and drove her home in her car. It had occurred to the estimable Gloria that she was probably with child. She lay upon the long lounge down-stairs. Day was slipping warmly out the window, touching the late roses on the porch pillars. "All I think of ever is that I love you," she wailed. "I value my body because you think it's beautiful. And this body of mine--of yours--to have it grow ugly and shapeless? It's simply intolerable. Oh, Anthony, I'm not afraid of the pain." He consoled her desperately--but in vain. She continued: "And then afterward I might have wide hips and be pale, with all my freshness gone and no radiance in my hair." He paced the floor with his hands in his pockets, asking: "Is it certain?" "I don't know anything. I've always hated obstrics, or whatever you call them. I thought I'd have a child some time. But not now." "Well, for God's sake don't lie there and go to pieces." Her sobs lapsed. She drew down a merciful silence from the twilight which filled the room. "Turn on the lights," she pleaded. "These days seem so short--June seemed--to--have--longer days when I was a little girl." The lights snapped on and it was as though blue drapes of softest silk had been dropped behind the windows and the door. Her pallor, her immobility, without grief now, or joy, awoke his sympathy. "Do you want me to have it?" she asked listlessly. "I'm indifferent. That is, I'm neutral. If you have it I'll probably be glad. If you don't--well, that's all right too." "I wish you'd make up your mind one way or the other!" "Suppose you make up _your_ mind." She looked at him contemptuously, scorning to answer. "You'd think you'd been singled out of all the women in the world for this crowning indignity." "What if I do!" she cried angrily. "It isn't an indignity for them. It's their one excuse for living. It's the one thing they're good for. It _is_ an indignity for _me._ "See here, Gloria, I'm with you whatever you do, but for God's sake be a sport about it." "Oh, don't _fuss_ at me!" she wailed. They exchanged a mute look of no particular significance but of much stress. Then Anthony took a book from the shelf and dropped into a chair. Half an hour later her voice came out of the intense stillness that pervaded the room and hung like incense on the air. "I'll drive over and see Constance Merriam to-morrow." "All right. And I'll go to Tarrytown and see Grampa." "--You see," she added, "it isn't that I'm afraid--of this or anything else. I'm being true to me, you know." "I know," he agreed. THE PRACTICAL MEN Adam Patch, in a pious rage against the Germans, subsisted on the war news. Pin maps plastered his walls; atlases were piled deep on tables convenient to his hand together with "Photographic Histories of the World War," official Explain-alls, and the "Personal Impressions" of war correspondents and of Privates X, Y, and Z. Several times during Anthony's visit his grandfather's secretary, Edward Shuttleworth, the one-time "Accomplished Gin-physician" of "Pat's Place" in Hoboken, now shod with righteous indignation, would appear with an extra. The old man attacked each paper with untiring fury, tearing out those columns which appeared to him of sufficient pregnancy for preservation and thrusting them into one of his already bulging files. "Well, what have you been doing?" he asked Anthony blandly. "Nothing? Well, I thought so. I've been intending to drive over and see you, all summer." "I've been writing. Don't you remember the essay I sent you--the one I sold to The Florentine last winter?" "Essay? You never sent _me_ any essay." "Oh, yes, I did. We talked about it." Adam Patch shook his head mildly. "Oh, no. You never sent _me_ any essay. You may have thought you sent it but it never reached me." "Why, you read it, Grampa," insisted Anthony, somewhat exasperated, "you read it and disagreed with it." The old man suddenly remembered, but this was made apparent only by a partial falling open of his mouth, displaying rows of gray gums. Eying Anthony with a green and ancient stare he hesitated between confessing his error and covering it up. "So you're writing," he said quickly. "Well, why don't you go over and write about these Germans? Write something real, something about what's going on, something people can read." "Anybody can't be a war correspondent," objected Anthony. "You have to have some newspaper willing to buy your stuff. And I can't spare the money to go over as a free-lance." "I'll send you over," suggested his grandfather surprisingly. "I'll get you over as an authorized correspondent of any newspaper you pick out." Anthony recoiled from the idea--almost simultaneously he bounded toward it. "I--don't--know--" He would have to leave Gloria, whose whole life yearned toward him and enfolded him. Gloria was in trouble. Oh, the thing wasn't feasible--yet--he saw himself in khaki, leaning, as all war correspondents lean, upon a heavy stick, portfolio at shoulder--trying to look like an Englishman. "I'd like to think it over," he, confessed. "It's certainly very kind of you. I'll think it over and I'll let you know." Thinking it over absorbed him on the journey to New York. He had had one of those sudden flashes of illumination vouchsafed to all men who are dominated by a strong and beloved woman, which show them a world of harder men, more fiercely trained and grappling with the abstractions of thought and war. In that world the arms of Gloria would exist only as the hot embrace of a chance mistress, coolly sought and quickly forgotten.... These unfamiliar phantoms were crowding closely about him when he boarded his train for Marietta, in the Grand Central Station. The car was crowded; he secured the last vacant seat and it was only after several minutes that he gave even a casual glance to the man beside him. When he did he saw a heavy lay of jaw and nose, a curved chin and small, puffed-under eyes. In a moment he recognized Joseph Bloeckman. Simultaneously they both half rose, were half embarrassed, and exchanged what amounted to a half handshake. Then, as though to complete the matter, they both half laughed. "Well," remarked Anthony without inspiration, "I haven't seen you for a long time." Immediately he regretted his words and started to add: "I didn't know you lived out this way." But Bloeckman anticipated him by asking pleasantly: "How's your wife? ..."

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At Gloria's fury his uncertainty returned, but he felt that now he had gone too far to give in. It seemed that he had always given in and that in her heart she had despised him for it. Ah, she might hate him now, but afterward she would admire him for his dominance. The approaching train gave out a premonitory siren that tumbled melodramatically toward them down the glistening blue tracks. Gloria tugged and strained to free herself, and words older than the Book of Genesis came to her lips. "Oh, you brute!" she sobbed. "Oh, you brute! Oh, I hate you! Oh, you brute! Oh--" On the station platform other prospective passengers were beginning to turn and stare; the drone of the train was audible, it increased to a clamor. Gloria's efforts redoubled, then ceased altogether, and she stood there trembling and hot-eyed at this helpless humiliation, as the engine roared and thundered into the station. Low, below the flood of steam and the grinding of the brakes came her voice: "Oh, if there was one _man_ here you couldn't do this! You couldn't do this! You coward! You coward, oh, you coward!" Anthony, silent, trembling himself, gripped her rigidly, aware that faces, dozens of them, curiously unmoved, shadows of a dream, were regarding him. Then the bells distilled metallic crashes that were like physical pain, the smoke-stacks volleyed in slow acceleration at the sky, and in a moment of noise and gray gaseous turbulence the line of faces ran by, moved off, became indistinct--until suddenly there was only the sun slanting east across the tracks and a volume of sound decreasing far off like a train made out of tin thunder. He dropped her arms. He had won. Now, if he wished, he might laugh. The test was done and he had sustained his will with violence. Let leniency walk in the wake of victory. "We'll hire a car here and drive back to Marietta," he said with fine reserve. For answer Gloria seized his hand with both of hers and raising it to her mouth bit deeply into his thumb. He scarcely noticed the pain; seeing the blood spurt he absent-mindedly drew out his handkerchief and wrapped the wound. That too was part of the triumph he supposed--it was inevitable that defeat should thus be resented--and as such was beneath notice. She was sobbing, almost without tears, profoundly and bitterly. "I won't go! I won't go! You--can't--make--me--go! You've--you've killed any love I ever had for you, and any respect. But all that's left in me would die before I'd move from this place. Oh, if I'd thought _you'd_ lay your hands on me--" "You're going with me," he said brutally, "if I have to carry you." He turned, beckoned to a taxicab, told the driver to go to Marietta. The man dismounted and swung the door open. Anthony faced his wife and said between his clenched teeth: "Will you get in?--or will I _put_ you in?" With a subdued cry of infinite pain and despair she yielded herself up and got into the car. All the long ride, through the increasing dark of twilight, she sat huddled in her side of the car, her silence broken by an occasional dry and solitary sob. Anthony stared out the window, his mind working dully on the slowly changing significance of what had occurred. Something was wrong--that last cry of Gloria's had struck a chord which echoed posthumously and with incongruous disquiet in his heart. He must be right--yet, she seemed such a pathetic little thing now, broken and dispirited, humiliated beyond the measure of her lot to bear. The sleeves of her dress were torn; her parasol was gone, forgotten on the platform. It was a new costume, he remembered, and she had been so proud of it that very morning when they had left the house.... He began wondering if any one they knew had seen the incident. And persistently there recurred to him her cry: "All that's left in me would die--" This gave him a confused and increasing worry. It fitted so well with the Gloria who lay in the corner--no longer a proud Gloria, nor any Gloria he had known. He asked himself if it were possible. While he did not believe she would cease to love him--this, of course, was unthinkable--it was yet problematical whether Gloria without her arrogance, her independence, her virginal confidence and courage, would be the girl of his glory, the radiant woman who was precious and charming because she was ineffably, triumphantly herself. He was very drunk even then, so drunk as not to realize his own drunkenness. When they reached the gray house he went to his own room and, his mind still wrestling helplessly and sombrely with what he had done, fell into a deep stupor on his bed. It was after one o'clock and the hall seemed extraordinarily quiet when Gloria, wide-eyed and sleepless, traversed it and pushed open the door of his room. He had been too befuddled to open the windows and the air was stale and thick with whiskey. She stood for a moment by his bed, a slender, exquisitely graceful figure in her boyish silk pajamas--then with abandon she flung herself upon him, half waking him in the frantic emotion of her embrace, dropping her warm tears upon his throat. "Oh, Anthony!" she cried passionately, "oh, my darling, you don't know what you did!" Yet in the morning, coming early into her room, he knelt down by her bed and cried like a little boy, as though it was his heart that had been broken. "It seemed, last night," she said gravely, her fingers playing in his hair, "that all the part of me you loved, the part that was worth knowing, all the pride and fire, was gone. I knew that what was left of me would always love you, but never in quite the same way." Nevertheless, she was aware even then that she would forget in time and that it is the manner of life seldom to strike but always to wear away. After that morning the incident was never mentioned and its deep wound healed with Anthony's hand--and if there was triumph some darker force than theirs possessed it, possessed the knowledge and the victory. NIETZSCHEAN INCIDENT Gloria's independence, like all sincere and profound qualities, had begun unconsciously, but, once brought to her attention by Anthony's fascinated discovery of it, it assumed more nearly the proportions of a formal code. From her conversation it might be assumed that all her energy and vitality went into a violent affirmation of the negative principle "Never give a damn." "Not for anything or anybody," she said, "except myself and, by implication, for Anthony. That's the rule of all life and if it weren't I'd be that way anyhow. Nobody'd do anything for me if it didn't gratify them to, and I'd do as little for them."

Mrs. Baines was very polite to the young man. He related his interview with the police, whose opinion was that he had been attacked by stray members of a gang from Hanbridge. The young lady assistants, with ears cocked, gathered the nature of Mr. Scales's adventure, and were thrilled to the point of questioning Mr. Povey about it after Mr. Scales had gone. His farewell was marked by much handshaking, and finally Mr. Povey ran after him into the Square to mention something about dogs. At half-past one, while Mrs. Baines was dozing after dinner, Sophia wrapped herself up, and with a book under her arm went forth into the world, through the shop. She returned in less than twenty minutes. But her mother had already awakened, and was hovering about the back of the shop. Mothers have supernatural gifts. Sophia nonchalantly passed her and hurried into the parlour where she threw down her muff and a book and knelt before the fire to warm herself. Mrs. Baines followed her. "Been to the Library?" questioned Mrs. Baines. "Yes, mother. And it's simply perishing." "I wonder at your going on a day like to-day. I thought you always went on Thursdays?" "So I do. But I'd finished my book." "What is this?" Mrs. Baines picked up the volume, which was covered with black oil-cloth. She picked it up with a hostile air. For her attitude towards the Free Library was obscurely inimical. She never read anything herself except The Sunday at Home, and Constance never read anything except The Sunday at Home. There were scriptural commentaries, Dugdale's Gazetteer, Culpepper's Herbal, and works by Bunyan and Flavius Josephus in the drawing-room bookcase; also Uncle Tom's Cabin. And Mrs. Baines, in considering the welfare of her daughters, looked askance at the whole remainder of printed literature. If the Free Library had not formed part of the Famous Wedgwood Institution, which had been opened with immense eclat by the semi-divine Gladstone; if the first book had not been ceremoniously 'taken out' of the Free Library by the Chief Bailiff in person--a grandfather of stainless renown--Mrs. Baines would probably have risked her authority in forbidding the Free Library. "You needn't be afraid," said Sophia, laughing. "It's Miss Sewell's Experience of Life." "A novel, I see," observed Mrs. Baines, dropping the book. Gold and jewels would probably not tempt a Sophia of these days to read Experience of Life; but to Sophia Baines the bland story had the piquancy of the disapproved. The next day Mrs. Baines summoned Sophia into her bedroom. "Sophia," said she, trembling, "I shall be glad if you will not walk about the streets with young men until you have my permission." The girl blushed violently. "I--I--" "You were seen in Wedgwood Street," said Mrs. Baines. "Who's been gossiping--Mr. Critchlow, I suppose?" Sophia exclaimed scornfully. "No one has been 'gossiping,'" said Mrs Baines. "Well, if I meet some one by accident in the street I can't help it, can I?" Sophia's voice shook. "You know what I mean, my child," said Mrs. Baines, with careful calm. Sophia dashed angrily from the room. "I like the idea of him having 'a heavy day'!" Mrs. Baines reflected ironically, recalling a phrase which had lodged in her mind. And very vaguely, with an uneasiness scarcely perceptible, she remembered that 'he,' and no other, had been in the shop on the day her husband died.

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If anybody thinks I'm going to stand the cold in this showroom any longer, they're mistaken," said Sophia the next morning loudly, and in her mother's hearing. And she went down into the shop carrying bonnets. She pretended to be angry, but she was not. She felt, on the contrary, extremely joyous, and charitable to all the world. Usually she would take pains to keep out of the shop; usually she was preoccupied and stern. Hence her presence on the ground-floor, and her demeanour, excited interest among the three young lady assistants who sat sewing round the stove in the middle of the shop, sheltered by the great pile of shirtings and linseys that fronted the entrance. Sophia shared Constance's corner. They had hot bricks under their feet, and fine-knitted wraps on their shoulders. They would have been more comfortable near the stove, but greatness has its penalties. The weather was exceptionally severe. The windows were thickly frosted over, so that Mr. Povey's art in dressing them was quite wasted. And--rare phenomenon!--the doors of the shop were shut. In the ordinary way they were not merely open, but hidden by a display of 'cheap lines.' Mr. Povey, after consulting Mrs. Baines, had decided to close them, foregoing the customary display. Mr. Povey had also, in order to get a little warmth into his limbs, personally assisted two casual labourers to scrape the thick frozen snow off the pavement; and he wore his kid mittens. All these things together proved better than the evidence of barometers how the weather nipped. Mr. Scales came about ten o'clock. Instead of going to Mr. Povey's counter, he walked boldly to Constance's corner, and looked over the boxes, smiling and saluting. Both the girls candidly delighted in his visit. Both blushed; both laughed--without knowing why they laughed. Mr. Scales said he was just departing and had slipped in for a moment to thank all of them for their kindness of last night--'or rather this morning.' The girls laughed again at this witticism. Nothing could have been more simple than his speech. Yet it appeared to them magically attractive. A customer entered, a lady; one of the assistants rose from the neighbourhood of the stove, but the daughters of the house ignored the customer; it was part of the etiquette of the shop that customers, at any rate chance customers, should not exist for the daughters of the house, until an assistant had formally drawn attention to them. Otherwise every one who wanted a pennyworth of tape would be expecting to be served by Miss Baines, or Miss Sophia, if Miss Sophia were there. Which would have been ridiculous. Sophia, glancing sidelong, saw the assistant parleying with the customer; and then the assistant came softly behind the counter and approached the corner. "Miss Constance, can you spare a minute?" the assistant whispered discreetly. Constance extinguished her smile for Mr. Scales, and, turning away, lighted an entirely different and inferior smile for the customer. "Good morning, Miss Baines. Very cold, isn't it?" "Good morning, Mrs. Chatterley. Yes, it is. I suppose you're getting anxious about those--" Constance stopped. Sophia was now alone with Mr. Scales, for in order to discuss the unnameable freely with Mrs. Chatterley her sister was edging up the counter. Sophia had dreamed of a private conversation as something delicious and impossible. But chance had favoured her. She was alone with him. And his neat fair hair and his blue eyes and his delicate mouth were as wonderful to her as ever. He was gentlemanly to a degree that impressed her more than anything had impressed her in her life. And all the proud and aristocratic instinct that was at the base of her character sprang up and seized on his gentlemanliness like a famished animal seizing on food. "The last time I saw you," said Mr. Scales, in a new tone, "you said you were never in the shop." "What? Yesterday? Did I?" "No, I mean the last time I saw you alone," said he. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "It's just an accident." "That's exactly what you said last time." "Is it?" Was it his manner, or what he said, that flattered her, that intensified her beautiful vivacity? "I suppose you don't often go out?" he went on. "What? In this weather?" "Any time." "I go to chapel," said she, "and marketing with mother." There was a little pause. "And to the Free Library." "Oh yes. You've got a Free Library here now, haven't you?" "Yes. We've had it over a year."

Maggie blundered up the kitchen stairs with the teapot and hot toast; and so Sophia had an excuse for silence. Sophia too had suffered much, suffered excruciatingly; she carried at that moment a whole tragedy in her young soul, unaccustomed to such burdens. Her attitude towards her mother was half fearful and half defiant; it might be summed up in the phrase which she had repeated again and again under her breath on the way home, "Well, mother can't kill me!" Mrs. Baines put down the blue-covered magazine and twisted her rocking-chair towards the table. "You can pour out the tea," said Mrs. Baines. "Where's Constance?" "She's not very well. She's lying down." "Anything the matter with her?" "No." This was inaccurate. Nearly everything was the matter with Constance, who had never been less Constance than during that afternoon. But Mrs. Baines had no intention of discussing Constance's love-affairs with Sophia. The less said to Sophia about love, the better! Sophia was excitable enough already! They sat opposite to each other, on either side of the fire--the monumental matron whose black bodice heavily overhung the table, whose large rounded face was creased and wrinkled by what seemed countless years of joy and disillusion; and the young, slim girl, so fresh, so virginal, so ignorant, with all the pathos of an unsuspecting victim about to be sacrificed to the minotaur of Time! They both ate hot toast, with careless haste, in silence, preoccupied, worried, and outwardly nonchalant. "And what has Miss Chetwynd got to say?" Mrs. Baines inquired. "She wasn't in." Here was a blow for Mrs. Baines, whose suspicions about Sophia, driven off by her certainties regarding Constance, suddenly sprang forward in her mind, and prowled to and fro like a band of tigers. Still, Mrs. Baines was determined to be calm and careful. "Oh! What time did you call?" "I don't know. About half-past four." Sophia finished her tea quickly, and rose. "Shall I tell Mr. Povey he can come?" (Mr. Povey had his tea after the ladies of the house.) "Yes, if you will stay in the shop till I come. Light me the gas before you go." Sophia took a wax taper from a vase on the mantelpiece, stuck it in the fire and lit the gas, which exploded in its crystal cloister with a mild report. "What's all that clay on your boots, child?" asked Mrs. Baines. "Clay?" repeated Sophia, staring foolishly at her boots. "Yes," said Mrs. Baines. "It looks like marl. Where on earth have you been?" She interrogated her daughter with an upward gaze, frigid and unconsciously hostile, through her gold-rimmed glasses. "I must have picked it up on the roads," said Sophia, and hastened to the door. "Sophia!" "Yes, mother." "Shut the door." Sophia unwillingly shut the door which she had half opened. "Come here." Sophia obeyed, with falling lip. "You are deceiving me, Sophia," said Mrs. Baines, with fierce solemnity. "Where have you been this afternoon?" Sophia's foot was restless on the carpet behind the table. "I haven't been anywhere," she murmured glumly. "Have you seen young Scales?" "Yes," said Sophia with grimness, glancing audaciously for an instant at her mother. ("She can't kill me: She can't kill me," her heart muttered. And she had youth and beauty in her favour, while her mother was only a fat middle-aged woman. "She can't kill me," said her heart, with the trembling, cruel insolence of the mirror-flattered child.) "How came you to meet him?" No answer. "Sophia, you heard what I said!" Still no answer. Sophia looked down at the table. ("She can't kill me.") "If you are going to be sullen, I shall have to suppose the worst," said Mrs. Baines. Sophia kept her silence. "Of course," Mrs. Baines resumed, "if you choose to be wicked, neither your mother nor any one else can stop you. There are certain things I CAN do, and these I SHALL do ... Let me warn you that young Scales is a thoroughly bad lot. I know all about him. He has been living a wild life abroad, and if it hadn't been that his uncle is a partner in Birkinshaws, they would never have taken him on again." A pause. "I hope that one day you will be a happy wife, but you are much too young yet to be meeting young men, and nothing would ever induce me to let you have anything to do with this Scales. I won't have it. In future you are not to go out alone. You understand me?" Sophia kept silence. "I hope you will be in a better frame of mind to-morrow. I can only hope so. But if you aren't, I shall take very severe measures. You think you can defy me. But you never were more mistaken in your life. I don't want to see any more of you now. Go and tell Mr. Povey; and call Maggie for the fresh tea. You make me almost glad that your father died even as he did. He has, at any rate, been spared this." Those words 'died even as he did' achieved the intimidation of Sophia. They seemed to indicate that Mrs. Baines, though she had magnanimously never mentioned the subject to Sophia, knew exactly how the old man had died. Sophia escaped from the room in fear, cowed. Nevertheless, her thought was, "She hasn't killed me. I made up my mind I wouldn't talk, and I didn't." In the evening, as she sat in the shop primly and sternly sewing at hats--while her mother wept in secret on the first floor, and Constance remained hidden on the second--Sophia lived over again the scene at the old shaft; but she lived it differently, admitting that she had been wrong, guessing by instinct that she had shown a foolish mistrust of love. As she sat in the shop, she adopted just the right attitude and said just the right things. Instead of being a silly baby she was an accomplished and dazzling woman, then. When customers came in, and the young lady assistants unobtrusively turned higher the central gas, according to the regime of the shop, it was really extraordinary that they could not read in the heart of the beautiful Miss Baines the words which blazed there; "YOU'RE THE FINEST GIRL I EVER MET," and "I SHALL WRITE TO YOU." The young lady assistants had their notions as to both Constance and Sophia, but the truth, at least as regarded Sophia, was beyond the flight of their imaginations. When eight o'clock struck and she gave the formal order for dust-sheets, the shop being empty, they never supposed that she was dreaming about posts and plotting how to get hold of the morning's letters before Mr. Povey.

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Oh!" said Mr. Povey, facing her with absurd nervous brusqueness, as though pretending: "Ah, yes! We have something to say--I was forgetting!" Then he began: "It's about Constance and me." Yes, they had evidently plotted this interview. Constance had evidently taken herself off on purpose to leave Mr. Povey unhampered. They were in league. The inevitable had come. No sleep! No repose! Nothing but worry once more! "I'm not at all satisfied with the present situation," said Mr. Povey, in a tone that corresponded to his words. "I don't know what you mean, Mr. Povey," said Mrs. Baines stiffly. This was a simple lie. "Well, really, Mrs. Baines!" Mr. Povey protested, "I suppose you won't deny that you know there is something between me and Constance? I suppose you won't deny that?" "What is there between you and Constance? I can assure you I--" "That depends on you," Mr. Povey interrupted her. When he was nervous his manners deteriorated into a behaviour that resembled rudeness. "That depends on you!" he repeated grimly. "But--" "Are we to be engaged or are we not?" pursued Mr. Povey, as though Mrs. Baines had been guilty of some grave lapse and he was determined not to spare her. "That's what I think ought to be settled, one way or the other. I wish to be perfectly open and aboveboard--in the future, as I have been in the past." "But you have said nothing to me at all!" Mrs. Baines remonstrated, lifting her eyebrows. The way in which the man had sprung this matter upon her was truly too audacious. Mr. Povey approached her as she sat at the table, shaking her ringlets and looking at her hands. "You know there's something between us!" he insisted. "How should I know there is something between you? Constance has never said a word to me. And have you?" "Well," said he. "We've hidden nothing." "What is there between you and Constance? If I may ask!" "That depends on you," said he again. "Have you asked her to be your wife?" "No. I haven't exactly asked her to be my wife." He hesitated. "You see--" Mrs. Baines collected her forces. "Have you kissed her?" This in a cold voice. Mr. Povey now blushed. "I haven't exactly kissed her," he stammered, apparently shocked by the inquisition. "No, I should not say that I had kissed her." It might have been that before committing himself he felt a desire for Mrs. Baines's definition of a kiss. "You are very extraordinary," she said loftily. It was no less than the truth. "All I want to know is--have you got anything against me?" he demanded roughly. "Because if so--" "Anything against you, Mr. Povey? Why should I have anything against you?" "Then why can't we be engaged?" She considered that he was bullying her. "That's another question," said she. "Why can't we be engaged? Ain't I good enough?" The fact was that he was not regarded as good enough. Mrs. Maddack had certainly deemed that he was not good enough. He was a solid mass of excellent qualities; but he lacked brilliance, importance, dignity. He could not impose himself. Such had been the verdict. And now, while Mrs. Baines was secretly reproaching Mr. Povey for his inability to impose himself, he was most patently imposing himself on her--and the phenomenon escaped her! She felt that he was bullying her, but somehow she could not perceive his power. Yet the man who could bully Mrs. Baines was surely no common soul! "You know my very high opinion of you," she said. Mr. Povey pursued in a mollified tone. "Assuming that Constance is willing to be engaged, do I understand you consent?" "But Constance is too young." "Constance is twenty. She is more than twenty." "In any case you won't expect me to give you an answer now." "Why not? You know my position." She did. From a practical point of view the match would be ideal: no fault could be found with it on that side. But Mrs. Baines could not extinguish the idea that it would be a 'come-down' for her daughter. Who, after all, was Mr. Povey? Mr. Povey was nobody. "I must think things over," she said firmly, putting her lips together. "I can't reply like this. It is a serious matter." "When can I have your answer? To-morrow?" "No--really--" "In a week, then?" "I cannot bind myself to a date," said Mrs. Baines, haughtily. She felt that she was gaining ground. "Because I can't stay on here indefinitely as things are," Mr. Povey burst out, and there was a touch of hysteria in his tone. "Now, Mr. Povey, please do be reasonable." "That's all very well," he went on. "That's all very well. But what I say is that employers have no right to have male assistants in their houses unless they are prepared to let their daughters marry! That's what I say! No RIGHT!" Mrs. Baines did not know what to answer. The aspirant wound up: "I must leave if that's the case." "If what's the case?" she asked herself. "What has come over him?" And aloud: "You know you would place me in a very awkward position by leaving, and I hope you don't want to mix up two quite different things. I hope you aren't trying to threaten me." "Threaten you!" he cried. "Do you suppose I should leave here for fun? If I leave it will be because I can't stand it. That's all. I can't stand it. I want Constance, and if I can't have her, then I can't stand it. What do you think I'm made of?" "I'm sure--" she began. "That's all very well!" he almost shouted. "But please let me speak,' she said quietly. "All I say is I can't stand it. That's all. ... Employers have no right. ... We have our feelings like other men." He was deeply moved. He might have appeared somewhat grotesque to the strictly impartial observer of human nature. Nevertheless he was deeply and genuinely moved, and possibly human nature could have shown nothing more human than Mr. Povey at the moment when, unable any longer to restrain the paroxysm which had so surprisingly overtaken him, he fled from the parlour, passionately, to the retreat of his bedroom. "That's the worst of those quiet calm ones," said Mrs. Baines to herself. "You never know if they won't give way. And when they do, it's awful--awful. ... What did I do, what did I say, to bring it on? Nothing! Nothing!" And where was her afternoon sleep? What was going to happen to her daughter? What could she say to Constance? How next could she meet Mr. Povey? Ah! It needed a brave, indomitable woman not to cry out brokenly: "I've suffered too much. Do anything you like; only let me die in peace!" And so saying, to let everything indifferently slide! You've been out, Sophia?" said Mrs. Baines in the parlour, questioningly. Sophia had taken off her hat and mantle hurriedly in the cutting-out room, for she was in danger of being late for tea; but her hair and face showed traces of the March breeze. Mrs. Baines, whose stoutness seemed to increase, sat in the rocking- chair with a number of The Sunday at Home in her hand. Tea was set. "Yes, mother. I called to see Miss Chetwynd." "I wish you'd tell me when you are going out." "I looked all over for you before I started." "No, you didn't, for I haven't stirred from this room since four o'clock. ... You should not say things like that," Mrs. Baines added in a gentler tone. Mrs. Baines had suffered much that day. She knew that she was in an irritable, nervous state, and therefore she said to herself, in her quality of wise woman, "I must watch myself. I mustn't let myself go." And she thought how reasonable she was. She did not guess that all her gestures betrayed her; nor did it occur to her that few things are more galling than the spectacle of a person, actuated by lofty motives, obviously trying to be kind and patient under what he considers to be extreme provocation.