cent?' he laughed.

She hesitated, caught. 'Yours,' she replied boldly.

'Very amusing!' Harry said judicially, after the episode of the Brooklyn
collection had been related. 'Talmage must be a caution.... I suppose
you're staying at the Five Towns Hotel?' he inquired, with an
implication in his voice that there was no other hotel in the district
fit for the patronage of a man of the world. Twemlow nodded.

'What! At Knype?' Leonora exclaimed. 'Then where did you dine to-day?'

'I had dinner at the Tiger, and not a bad dinner either,' he said.

'Oh dear!' Harry murmured, indicating an august sympathy for Arthur
Twemlow in affliction.

'If I had only known--I don't know what I was thinking of not to ask you
to come here for dinner,' said Leonora. 'I made sure you would be
engaged somewhere.'

'Fancy you eating all alone at the Tiger, on Sunday too!' remarked
Milly.

'Tut! tut!' Twemlow protested, with a farcical exactness of
pronunciation; and Ethel laughed.

'What are you laughing at, my dear?' Leonora asked mildly.

'I don't know, mother--really I don't.' Whereupon they all laughed
together and a state of absolute intimacy was established.

'I hadn't the least notion of being at Bursley to-day,' Twemlow
explained. 'But I thought that Knype wasn't much of a place--I always
did think that, being a native of Bursley. I wouldn't be surprised if
you've noticed, Mrs. Stanway, how all the five Five Towns kind of sit
and sniff at each other. Well, I felt dull after breakfast, and when I
saw the advertisement of Dr. Quain at the old chapel, I came right away.
And that's all, except that I'm going to sup with a man at Knype
to-night.'

There were sounds in the hall, and the door of the drawing-room opened;
but it was only Bessie coming to light the gas.

'Is that your master just come in?' Leonora asked her.

'Yes, ma'am.'

'At last,' said Leonora, and they waited. With noiseless precision
Bessie lit the gas, made the fire, drew the curtains, and departed. Then
they could hear John's heavy footsteps overhead.

Leonora began nervously to talk about Rose, and Twemlow showed a polite
interest in Rose's private trials; Ethel said that she had just visited
the patient, who slept. Harry asseverated that to remain a moment longer
away from his mother's house would mean utter ruin for him, and with
extraordinary suddenness he made his adieux and went, followed to the
front door by Millicent. The conversation in the r