"She's a real beauty," said Richard, between his teeth. The fan
fluttered.

Five minutes afterwards, the widow and the bachelor seemed so much at
their ease that Mrs. Pompley, who had been forced to leave her friend,
in order to receive the dean's lady, could scarcely believe her eyes
when she returned to the sofa.

Now, it was from that evening that Mr. Richard Avenel exhibited
the change of mood which I have described; and from that evening he
abstained from taking Leonard with him to any of the parties in the
Abbey Gardens.

CHAPTER IX.

Some days after this memorable soiree, Colonel Pompley sat alone in his
study (which opened pleasantly on an old-fashioned garden), absorbed in
the house bills. For Colonel Pompley did not leave that domestic care
to his lady,--perhaps she was too grand for it. Colonel Pompley with
his own sonorous voice ordered the joints, and with his own heroic hands
dispensed the stores. In justice to the colonel, I must add--at
whatever risk of offence to the fair sex--that there was not a house at
Screwstown so well managed as the Pompleys'; none which so successfully
achieved the difficult art of uniting economy with show. I should
despair of conveying to you an idea of the extent to which Colonel
Pompley made his income go. It was but seven hundred a year; and many
a family contrived to do less upon three thousand. To be sure, the
Pompleys had no children to sponge upon them. What they had they spent
all on themselves. Neither, if the Pompleys never exceeded their income,
did they pretend to live much within it. The two ends of the year met at
Christmas,--just met, and no more.

Colonel Pompley sat at his desk. He was in his well-brushed blue coat,
buttoned across his breast, his gray trousers fitted tight to his limbs,
and fastened under his boots with a link chain. He saved a great deal
of money in straps. No one ever saw Colonel Pompley in dressing-gown and
slippers. He and his house were alike in order--always fit to be seen

"From morn to noon, from noon to dewy eve."

The colonel was a short compact man, inclined to be stout,--with a very
red face, that seemed not only shaved, but rasped. He wore his
hair cropped close, except just in front, where it formed what the
hairdresser called a feather, but it seemed a feather of iron, so stiff
and so strong was it. Firmness and precision were emphatically marked on
the colonel's countenance. There was a resolute strain