ng furtively from one to the other like a trapped
animal. But James was too obtuse and Julia too angry to notice the look.

Mr. Burton placed a chair for his wife and sat down, carefully pulling
up his new trousers at the knees. "Julia and I," he began, "feel it to
be our duty to speak to you seriously about----"

"I can't listen to-night; I--I'm not well. My head aches--you must
wait."

Arthur spoke in a strange, indistinct voice, with a confused and
rambling manner. James looked round in surprise.

"Is there anything the matter with you?" he asked anxiously, suddenly
remembering that Arthur had come from a very hotbed of infection. "I
hope you're not sickening for anything. You look quite feverish."

"Nonsense!" Julia interrupted sharply. "It's only the usual theatricals,
because he's ashamed to face us. Come here and sit down, Arthur." Arthur
slowly crossed the room and sat down on the bed. "Yes?" he said wearily.

Mr. Burton coughed, cleared his throat, smoothed his already immaculate
beard, and began the carefully prepared speech over again:

"I feel it to be my duty--my painful duty--to speak very seriously
to you about your extraordinary behaviour in connecting yourself
with--a--law-breakers and incendiaries and--a--persons of disreputable
character. I believe you to have been, perhaps, more foolish than
depraved--a----"

He paused.

"Yes?" Arthur said again.

"Now, I do not wish to be hard on you," James went on, softening a
little in spite of himself before the weary hopelessness of Arthur's
manner. "I am quite willing to believe that you have been led away by
bad companions, and to take into account your youth and inexperience and
the--a--a--imprudent and--a--impulsive character which you have, I fear,
inherited from your mother."

Arthur's eyes wandered slowly to his mother's portrait and back again,
but he did not speak.

"But you will, I feel sure, understand," James continued, "that it is
quite impossible for me to keep any longer in my house a person who has
brought public disgrace upon a name so highly respected as ours."

"Yes?" Arthur repeated once more.

"Well?" said Julia sharply, closing her fan with a snap and laying it
across her knee. "Are you going to have the goodness to say anything but
'Yes,' Arthur?"

"You will do as you think best, of course," he answered slowly, without
moving. "It doesn't matter much either way."

"Doesn't--matter?" James repeated, aghast; and his wife