Rainham. Shall we see you again before we go to Switzerland? Ah,
well, let's hope so. Au revoir, Mr. Lightmark. If you really think
it's worth while for me to give you a solitary sitting next
week----"

"If you would be so good. You see, I should have some ideas to go on
with. Don't I deserve some reward, too, for allowing Rainham to
monopolize you all the afternoon? And if you don't give me a sitting
now, I'm afraid you will forget all about it when you come back to
town; whereas, if we make a beginning, you will have to see it
through--you will be compromised."

"What a stupid expression!" thought Mrs. Sylvester as the carriage
rolled along the Kensington highroad.

Charles was unusually silent during the drive. The subject which
occupied his thoughts was not one which he would have dreamed of
ventilating even with his mother, and Eve's presence seemed to
render the faintest allusion to it impracticable.

He had no great affection or even regard for Philip Rainham, whom he
contemplated with that undefined disdain which a younger man so
often feels for one who is too old to be on his own level, and too
young to inspire reverence. The half-pitying regard which Mrs.
Sylvester bestowed on the man who had been to her husband as a very
dear younger brother had never furthered Rainham's advancement in
her son's favour; and the manner in which Eve had centred her
childish affections in Philip, who had made her his especial
favourite, was even more prejudicial to his interests in that
quarter. Hitherto, indeed, Sylvester's vague dislike had been so
undemonstrative and immaterial that he would hardly have owned to it
as such, and far less would he have acknowledged that he was,
however unconsciously, feeling for a peg on which to hang it, for
ground to support it; and yet from the first moment when the man's
startled voice drew the questioning eyes upon his embarrassment, the
judicial mind had been able to plume itself upon the penetration
which had enabled it to detect something of doubtful odour about him
from the first. "Kitty!" That word might explain so much--Rainham's
long sojourns away from his business, for example.

Charles looked at Eve and frowned. Decidedly, thought the young
moralist, the old intimacy must be discouraged. Nor did the fact
that Rainham had been the source of his first brief, as well as of
subsequent others, though it was not forgotten, suggest the
advisability of a compromise; he even began