ts or justifiable pique at his desertion.

"Why, here you are!" she exclaimed gaily. "Actually home before us,
like a dog that one takes out walking to try and lose. Poor thing! did
it run all the way under the carriage with its tongue out? and wasn't
it choked with dust, and isn't it tired and thirsty? and won't it come
in and have some tea?"

What could Dick say or do? He followed her up-stairs to the back
drawing-room, meek and submissive as the dog to which she had likened
him, waiting for her there with a dry mouth and a beating heart while
she went to "take off her things"; and when she reappeared smiling and
beautiful, able only to propound the following ridiculous question
with a gasp--

"Didn't you go on the water then, after all?"

"On the water!" she repeated. "Not I. Nothing half so pleasant,
I assure you. I wish we had! for anything so slow as the whole
performance on dry land, I never yet experienced. I danced five
dances, none of them nice ones--I hate dancing on turf--and I had a
warm-water ice and some jelly that tasted of bees'-wax. What became
of you? We couldn't find you anywhere to get the carriage. However, I
asked Aunt Agatha to come away directly somebody made a move, because
I was cross and tired and bored with the whole business. I think
she liked it much better than I did; but here she is to answer for
herself."

Dick had no dinner that day, yet what a pleasant cigar it was he
smoked as he coasted Belgrave Square once more in the sweet spring
evening under the gas-lamps! He had been very unhappy in the
afternoon, but that was all over now. Anxiety, suspicion, jealousy,
and the worst ingredient of the latter, a sense of humiliation, had
made wild work with his spirits, his temper, and indeed his appetite;
yet twenty minutes in a dusky back drawing-room, a cup of weak tea
and a slice of inferior bread-and-butter, were enough to restore
self-respect, peace of mind, and vigour of digestion. He could not
recall one word that bore an unusually favourable meaning, one look
that might not have been directed to a brother or an intimate friend,
and still he felt buoyed up with hope, restored to happiness. The
reaction had come on, and he was more in love with her than ever.

CHAPTER VIII

NINA

It might have spared Mr. Stanmore a deal of unnecessary discomfort had
the owner of those legs which he saw through the open window at Putney
thought fit to show the rest of his person to voy