, as the particular things he wanted went
for much more than he thought, I wasn't able to get any of them."

"I'm sure I'm very glad of it," said Mrs. Futvoye, "for his study is
crammed with odds and ends as it is, and I don't want the whole house to
look like a museum or an antiquity shop. I'd all the trouble in the
world to persuade him that a great gaudy gilded mummy-case was not quite
the thing for a drawing-room. But, please sit down, Mr. Ventimore."

"Thanks," stammered Horace, "but--but I mustn't stay. If you will tell
the Professor how sorry I was to miss him, and--and give him back this
note which he left with me to cover any deposit, I--I won't interrupt
you any longer."

He was, as a rule, imperturbable in most social emergencies, but just
now he was seized with a wild desire to escape, which, to his infinite
mortification, made him behave like a shy schoolboy.

"Nonsense!" said Mrs. Futvoye; "I am sure my husband would be most
annoyed if we didn't keep you till he came."

"I really ought to go," he declared, wistfully enough.

"We mustn't tease Mr. Ventimore to stay, mother, when he so evidently
wants to go," said Sylvia, cruelly.

"Well, I won't detain you--at least, not long. I wonder if you would
mind posting a letter for me as you pass the pillar-box? I've almost
finished it, and it ought to go to-night, and my maid Jessie has such a
bad cold I really don't like sending her out with it."

It would have been impossible to refuse to stay after that--even if he
had wished. It would only be for a few minutes. Sylvia might spare him
that much of her time. He should not trouble her again. So Mrs. Futvoye
went back to her bureau, and Sylvia and he were practically alone.

She had taken a seat not far from his, and made a few constrained
remarks, obviously out of sheer civility. He returned mechanical
replies, with a dreary wonder whether this could really be the girl who
had talked to him with such charming friendliness and confidence only a
few weeks ago in Normandy.

And the worst of it was, she was looking more bewitching than ever; her
slim arms gleaming through the black lace of her sleeves, and the gold
threads in her soft masses of chestnut hair sparkling in the light of
the shaded lamp behind her. The slight contraction of her eyebrows and
the mutinous downward curve of her mouth seemed expressive of boredom.

"What a dreadfully long time mamma is over that letter!" she said at
last. "I thin