with us?"

"I hope you will," said Mrs. Lorraine; and naturally enough he
consented.

Luncheon was just ready. As they were going into the room on the
opposite side of the hall, the younger lady said to Ingram in a quiet
undertone, but with much indifference of manner, "You know, if you
think I ought to give up Mr. Lavender's acquaintance altogether, I
will do so at once. But perhaps that will not be necessary."

So this was the house in which Sheila's husband spent so much of his
time, and these were the two ladies of whom so much had been said and
surmised? There were three of Lavender's pictures on the walls of
the dining-room, and as Ingram inadvertently glanced at them, Mrs.
Lorraine said to him, "Don't you think it is a pity Mr. Lavender
should continue drawing those imaginative sketches of heads? I do not
think, myself, that he does himself justice in that way. Some bits of
landscape, now, that I have seen seemed to me to have quite a definite
character about them, and promised far more than anything else of his
I have seen."

"That is precisely what I think," said Ingram, partly amused and
partly annoyed to find that this girl, with her clear gray eyes, her
soft and musical voice and her singular delicacy of manner, had an
evil trick of saying the very things he would himself have said, and
leaving him with nothing but a helpless "Yes."

"I think he ought to have given up his club when he married. Most
English gentlemen do that when they marry, do they not?" said Mrs.
Kavanagh.

"Some," said Ingram. "But a good deal of nonsense is talked about the
influence of clubs in that way. It is really absurd to suppose
that the size or the shape of a building can alter a man's moral
character."

"It does, though," said Mrs. Lorraine confidently. "I can tell
directly if a gentleman has been accustomed to spend his time in
clubs. When he is surprised or angry or impatient you can perceive
blanks in his conversation which in a club, I suppose, would be filled
up. Don't you know poor old Colonel Hannen's way of talking, mamma?
This old gentleman, Mr. Ingram, is very fond of speaking to you about
political liberty and the rights of conscience; and he generally
becomes so confused that he gets vexed with himself, and makes odd
pauses, as if he were invariably addressing himself in very
rude language indeed. Sometimes you would think he was like a
railway-engine, going blindly and helplessly on through a thick and
c