ting remark about
the weather--but he had the curious and unpleasant sensation of her
seeing through him most thoroughly and clearly. He felt ridiculously
like a captive, and his doubts as to his immediate escape increased.
The gaudy drawing-room, the dingy stairs, the gas hissing in the hall,
had been, in all conscience, depressing enough, but now this heavy,
mute, ominous woman, trailing her black robes so funereally behind her,
seemed, to his excited fancy, some implacable Frankenstein created by
his own thrice-cursed folly.

The dinner was not a success. The food was bad, but that Robin had
expected. As he faced the depression of it, he was more than ever
determined to end it, conclusively, that evening, but Mrs. Feverel's
gloom and Dahlia's little attempts at coquettish gaiety frightened him.
The conversation, supported mainly by Dahlia, fell into terrible
lapses, and the attempts to start it again had the unhappy air of
desperate remedies doomed to failure. Dahlia's pathetic glances failed
of their intent. Robin was too deeply engaged in his own gloomy
reflections to notice them, but her eyes filled with tears, and at last
her efforts ceased and a horrible, gloomy silence fell like a choking
fog upon them.

"Will you smoke, Robin?" she said, when at last the dessert, in the
shape of some melancholy oranges and one very attenuated banana, was on
the table. "Egyptian or Turkish--or will you have a pipe?"

He took a cigarette clumsily from the box and his fingers trembled as
he lit first hers and then his own--he was so terribly afraid of
cutting a ridiculous figure. He sat down again and beat a tattoo on
the tablecloth. Mrs. Feverel, with some grimly muttered excuse, left
the room. She watched him a moment from the other side of the table
and then she came over to him. She bent over his chair, leaning her
hands on his shoulders.

"Robin, what is it?" she said. "What's happened?"

"Nothing," he said gloomily. "It's all right----"

"Oh! do you suppose I haven't seen?" She bent closer to him and
pressed her cheek against his. "Robin, old boy--you're not getting
tired of me? You're tired or cross to-night--I don't know. I've been
very patient all this time--waiting for you--hoping that you would
come--longing for you--and you never came--all these many weeks. Then
I thought that, perhaps, you were too busy or were afraid of people
talking--but, at last, there was to be to-night; and I've looked