lodging-house things, so I furnished a couple of rooms myself some time
ago."

Mrs. Barnes rose slowly to her feet.

"You are quite sure you won't have a small piece more of beef?" she
enquired anxiously.

"Just a morsel?" Mr. Barnes asked, tapping the joint insinuatingly with
his carving knife.

"No, I thank you!" Mr. Fitzgerald declared firmly. "I have done
excellently."

"Then if you will put the joint on the sideboard, Adolphus," Mrs. Barnes
directed, "Maud and I will change the plates. We always let the girl go
out on Sundays, Mr. Fitzgerald," she explained, turning to their guest.
"It's very awkward, of course, but they seem to expect it."

"Quite natural, I'm sure," Mr. Fitzgerald murmured, watching Maud's
light movements with admiring eyes. "I like to see ladies interested in
domestic work."

"There's one thing I will say for Maud," her proud mother declared,
plumping down a dish of jelly upon the table, "she does know what's what
in keeping house, and even if she hasn't to scrape and save as I did
when David and I were first married, economy is a great thing when
you're young. I have always said so, and I stick to it."

"Quite right, Mother," Mr. Barnes declared.

"If instead of sitting there," Mrs. Barnes continued in high good
humour, "you were to get a bottle of that port wine out of the
cellarette, we might drink Mr. Fitzgerald's health, being as it's his
first visit."

Mr. Barnes rose to his feet with alacrity. "For a woman with sound
ideas," he declared, "commend me to your mother!"

Maud, having finished her duties, resumed her place by the side of the
guest of the evening. Their hands met under the tablecloth for a moment.
To the girl, the pleasure of such a proceeding was natural enough, but
Fitzgerald asked himself for the fiftieth time why on earth he, who,
notwithstanding his present modest exterior, was a young man of some
experience, should from such primitive love-making derive a rapture
which nothing else in life afforded him. He was, at that moment, content
with his future,--a future which he had absolutely and finally decided
upon. He was content with his father-in-law and his mother-in-law, with
Daisy Villa, and the prospect of a Daisy Villa for himself,--content,
even, with Adolphus! But for Mr. Spencer Fitzgerald, these things were
not to be! The awakening was even then at hand.

The dining room of Daisy Villa fronted the street, and was removed from
it only a few feet. Cons