ld shower bath, and Mr. Burrill, like all the "gutter born," rather
fears a shower bath.

Coarse in sense and sentiment, plebeian in body and soul; whatever else
Sybil Lamotte's husband may be, let our story develop.

Quitting his place now, he crosses the room, and, taking up a position
where his eyes can gloat upon Sybil's face, he rests one elbow upon a
mantel, and so, in a comfortable after-dinner attitude, continues his
pleasant meditations. Sybil stirs uneasily, but notices his proximity in
no other way. Presently her eyes shoot straight past him, and she says
to Evan who has also risen, and stands stretching himself, lazily, with
his face to the window, and his back toward the assembly:

"Evan, just hand me that book on the mantel. No, not _that_ one," as he
lays his ready hand on the book nearest him, "the other."

"Oh!" ejaculates Evan, at the same moment laying hand upon a volume
directly underneath John Burrill's elbow. "Hoist up your arrum, Burrill.
'My lady's up, and wants her wollum.'"

John Burrill's face reddens slowly. He is an Englishman, and sometimes
his H's and A's play him sorry tricks, although he has labored hard to
Americanize himself, and likes to think that he has succeeded.

"D--n it!" broke out the man, suddenly losing his after dinner calm.
"You might have asked _me_ for the book, Sybil; it was near enough."

Sybil received the book from Evan's hand, opened it, turned a page or
two, and then lifting her eyes to his face, replied in a voice, low,
clear, and cutting as the north wind:

"Evan is my slave, Mr. Burrill, _you_--are my lord and master."
Indescribable contempt shone upon him for a moment from her splendid
eyes; then she lowered them, and became, apparently, wholly absorbed in
her book.

John Burrill muttered something very low, and probably very ugly, and
dropped back into his former attitude; and the others, never by word or
glance, noticed this little passage at arms. Only Evan returned to the
window, and standing there with hands in pockets, glowered down upon the
frost-touched rose trees and clustered geraniums, savagely, and long.

Presently, Evan turns from the window, which commands a view of the
drive.

"Constance is coming," he says, addressing Sybil.

She starts up, looking anxious and disturbed; Constance has visited her,
and she has driven over once to see Constance; but it has so happened
that John Burrill has always been absent; and Sybil has a shuddering