then----" He gave a grim little smile.

Lalage's face grew hard. "Why should they hunt you like that? If they
really cared, they would have looked after you, instead of sending you
to those lodgings. They want you to be like a little boy, to do just
what they say, and never to have a mind of your own--oh, yes, but they
do. They ought to have seen that after all you've been through, you need
care and love."

He looked up with a queer light in his eyes. "Do you love me, Lalage?
You've never said so."

"I like you very, very much," she answered.

But he was not satisfied. "Do you love me?" he repeated.

"I like you better, much better, than anyone else I ever met," and with
that he had to be content.

CHAPTER XIV

"I know someone who will let you a room, just as an address, in case
those horrid sisters of yours make inquiries." Lalage turned round
suddenly from the looking-glass, her hands still busy with her hair.

"Who is she? Where does she live?" Jimmy asked lazily, being at the
moment more interested in that same hair than in anything else.

"She lives just the other side of Baker Street, and really she's a kind
of agent, you know." Lalage made a gesture of supreme disgust. "But
she's not so bad as most of them, and, as her husband is a clerk in the
Council office, anyone would tell your people that the house is quite
respectable. Why, it belongs to the mayor himself."

Jimmy frowned. He loathed the idea of putting himself in the hands of
people of that sort, people who would understand exactly how matters
stood, and judge, not only himself, but Lalage as well, according to
their own standards.

"I would sooner we had nothing whatever to do with any of them," he
said.

He was touching mud for the first time in his life, real mud, and he did
not like the feeling of it. Moreover, he had suddenly grown very
particular about Lalage. They might not be married, in fact he had
decided that there could be no question of marriage between them; but,
none the less, as long as he was going under another name, he wanted
people to believe they had legalised their union, and to respect Lalage
accordingly. Had he not belonged to a family of position, he might have
seen himself as a coward or a cad; but the Griersons were essentially of
the Victorian age, and so he was able to quiet his conscience with
platitudes; whilst under the seeming calmness with which Lalage had
accepted his proposal, she was too glad o