door,' she said.

'O no, ma'am! He's gone long ago. I answered it.'

Mrs. Hooper came in herself.

'So disappointing!' she said. 'Mr. Trewe not coming after all!'

'But I heard him knock, I fancy!'

'No; that was somebody inquiring for lodgings who came to the wrong
house. I forgot to tell you that Mr. Trewe sent a note just before lunch
to say I needn't get any tea for him, as he should not require the books,
and wouldn't come to select them.'

Ella was miserable, and for a long time could not even re-read his
mournful ballad on 'Severed Lives,' so aching was her erratic little
heart, and so tearful her eyes. When the children came in with wet
stockings, and ran up to her to tell her of their adventures, she could
not feel that she cared about them half as much as usual.

* * * * *

'Mrs. Hooper, have you a photograph of--the gentleman who lived here?'
She was getting to be curiously shy in mentioning his name.

'Why, yes. It's in the ornamental frame on the mantelpiece in your own
bedroom, ma'am.'

'No; the Royal Duke and Duchess are in that.'

'Yes, so they are; but he's behind them. He belongs rightly to that
frame, which I bought on purpose; but as he went away he said: "Cover me
up from those strangers that are coming, for God's sake. I don't want
them staring at me, and I am sure they won't want me staring at them." So
I slipped in the Duke and Duchess temporarily in front of him, as they
had no frame, and Royalties are more suitable for letting furnished than
a private young man. If you take 'em out you'll see him under. Lord,
ma'am, he wouldn't mind if he knew it! He didn't think the next tenant
would be such an attractive lady as you, or he wouldn't have thought of
hiding himself; perhaps.'

'Is he handsome?' she asked timidly.

'I call him so. Some, perhaps, wouldn't.'

'Should I?' she asked, with eagerness.

'I think you would, though some would say he's more striking than
handsome; a large-eyed thoughtful fellow, you know, with a very electric
flash in his eye when he looks round quickly, such as you'd expect a poet
to be who doesn't get his living by it.'

'How old is he?'

'Several years older than yourself, ma'am; about thirty-one or two, I
think.'

Ella was, as a matter of fact, a few months over thirty herself; but she
did not look nearly so much. Though so immature in nature, she was
entering on that tract of life in which emotional women begin to suspect
that la