“I should say I had; I couldn’t lose ’em. Whichever room I went to they followed; at least she did and he came after. I went from pillar to post, I give you my word, petty, but Edith had me by the neck; she never let go her grip for an instant. They won’t speak to each other, you see; only to me. I haven’t had a chance to even finish the paper. I’ve had the deuce of a time! I don’t know what you are going to do about it.”

“Never mind; it will be all right now,” said Mrs. Belmore reassuringly. She pushed past him into the parlour, where sat a tall, straight girl with straight, light brows, a long straight nose, and a straight mouth with a droop at the corners. In the room beyond, a thickset, dark young man with glasses and a nervous expression was looking at pictures. It did not require a Solomon to discover at a glance how the land lay.

If Mrs. Belmore had counted easily on her powers of conciliation, she was disappointed this time. After the dinner, whereat the conversation was dragged laboriously round four sides of a square, except when the two little girls made some slight diversion, and the several futile attempts when the meal was over to leave the lovers alone together, Mrs. Belmore resigned herself, perforce, to the loss of her cherished afternoon.

“It’s no use; we’ll have to give up the reading,” she said to her husband rapidly, in one of her comings and goings. “Perhaps later, dear. But it’s really dreadful; here we’ve been talking of religion and beet-root sugar and smallpox, when any one can see that her heart is breaking.”

“I think he is getting the worst of it,” said Mr. Belmore impartially.

“Oh, it won’t hurt him.”

“Well, you’ve given them plenty of opportunities to make up.”

“Yes; but he doesn’t know how.”

She added in a louder tone, “You take Mr. Wilson up to your den for a while, Herbert; Edith and I are going to have a cosy little time with the children; aren’t we, dear?”

“Have a cigar?” said Mr. Belmore as the two men seated themselves comfortably in a couple of wooden armchairs in the sunny little apartment hung with a miscellaneous collection of guns, swords, and rods, the drawing of a bloated trout, and a dusty pair of antlers.

“Thank you; I’m not smoking now,” said Mr. Wilson, with a hungry look at the open box on the table beside him.

“Oh!” said his host genially, “so you’re at that stage of the game. Well, I’ve been there myself. You have my sympathy. But this won’t last, you know.”

“Does your wife like smoking?”

“Loves it,” said Mr. Belmore, sinking the fact of his official limit to four cigars a day. “That is, of course, she thinks it’s a dirty habit, and unhealthy, and all that sort of thing, you know; but it doesn’t make any difference to her—not a pin’s worth. Cheer up, old fellow; you’ll get to this place, too.”

“Looks like it,” said the other bitterly. “Here I haven’t seen her for a week—I came two hundred miles on purpose yesterday, and now she won’t even look at me. I don’t know what’s the matter—haven’t the least idea—and I can’t get her to tell me. I have to be off to-morrow at seven o’clock, too—I call it pretty hard lines.”

“Let me see,” said Mr. Belmore judicially, knitting his brows as if burrowing into the past as he smoked. “Perhaps I can help you out. What have you been writing to her? Telling her all about what you’ve been doing, and just sending your love at the end? They don’t like that, you know.”