* * * *

"Once he's gone to the office, don't you see him any more, all day?"
Auntie asked, as the front door closed on the master of the house, next
morning.

"Not till dinner. He has a biscuit for his lunch, or goes without it.
He isn't a man to care for food at any time."

"No. He isn't what I call a restful man," Auntie said, and spread
herself more at her ease in her chair. "He isn't one, I should say, to
enjoy the comforts of home."

"Oh, as for that, I don't care for a man always in your way among the
chairs and tables," Mrs Mellish said. "Gussie isn't a woman's man, you
see, Auntie. He's about as clever as they're made, Gussie is; and when
they're like that they're _men's_ men; and I like them better so."

Grace's red cheeks were redder. She was a quick-tempered, high-spirited
young woman. "Hands off! he's mine," her manner, more than her words,
said to Auntie, who would have liked to listen to a few wifely
confidences as she and her niece sat _tete-a-tete_ through the long
morning.

* * * * *

They lived in a provincial town, and on the second night of Auntie's
stay they went to the theatre, at which a London company happened to be
performing.

Grace loved the play, and was in high spirits, making an extra toilette
for the occasion. She was not half through it when her husband, who had
hurried over his dressing, left her and went downstairs. He had heard
Auntie, who was always too early for everything, and made a merit of
it, leave her room. He found her in the drawing-room, pulling a pair of
long white gloves over her large hands and arms.

"I have been stupid enough to leave myself short of cash," Mellish
said, beginning lightly at once, almost before he had closed the door
behind him. "I wonder if you could oblige me, Auntie, with a few pounds
for a couple of days? Say ten or fifteen? Just to carry me on till my
money-ship comes in."

Auntie, working on her tight gloves, looked at him; his tone was
carefully careless, but his face, which she had called chalk-white, was
surely whiter yet. His question being asked, his lips still moved.

"How Grace can bear to sit opposite to him at meals every day, I don't
know!" Auntie said to herself. "He gives me the creeps."

She drew in her lower lip loosely beneath her teeth, her gaze grew
blanker; never a clever-looking woman, now she looked a fool. Slowly
she shook her head.

"No. I am afraid