floors. The
thought of those glorious days gave her own rather faded furniture a
colour and a touch of poetry. Sometimes, Lizzie thought with a sigh, if
her mother had inhabited a plain nineteenth-century house living within
a small income would have been easier for her.

Lizzie, entering the drawing-room, knew at once that Mr. Breton was
still there. She saw that he was tall and spare, that he had no left
arm, that he had a rather small pointed brown beard and eyes that struck
her as fierce and protesting. She did not know whether it were the beard
or the eyes or the absence of the arm, but at her first vision of him
she said to herself: "He's too dramatic; it's not quite real," and her
second thought was: "He's just what mother will like him to be!"

He was standing against the window, and he wore a black suit, a little
faded. The blinds had not been drawn, and the square beyond the window
was elephant grey, with the lamps at each corner a dim yellow; there was
a thin rather ragged garden in the middle of the square, and in the
garden was a statue of a nymph, old and deserted, and some trees now
faintly green. Over it all was a sky so pale that it was more nearly
white than blue.

Although the curtains had not been drawn a lamp in the middle of the
room was lit and the fire burnt merrily. The furniture had once been
good and was now respectable. There were several photographs, a copy of
"The Fighting Temeraire," and a water-colour sketch of "Lodore Falls."
There was a book-case with the works of Tennyson, Longfellow, and Miss
Braddon, and on one of the tables two French novels, one by Gyp and one
by Zola.

Mrs. Rand would have been handsome had her grey hair been less untidy
and her clothes more uniform in design and colour. Her blouse was cut
too low and she wore too many rings; her eyes always wore a
lying-in-wait expression, as though she might be called on to be excited
at any moment and didn't wish to miss the opportunity.

Daisy Rand was pretty and pink with light fluffy hair. All her clothes
looked as though their chief purpose were to reveal other clothes. The
impression that she left on a casual observer was that she must be cold
in such thin things.

Lizzie, looking at Frank Breton, could not tell what impression her
sister and mother had made upon him. "At any rate," she thought, "he's
stayed a long time. That looks as though he had been entertained." She
was introduced to him and liked the cool, fi