lin felt a little giddy. He collected himself, and drawled:

"Are you going in to see your Guardy?"

"No. Mother's got something special to say. We've never been here
before, you see. Isn't he fun, though?"

"Fun!"

"I think he's the greatest lark; but he's awfully nice to me. Jock calls
him the last of the Stoic'uns."

A voice called from old Heythorp's den:

"Phyllis!" It had a particular ring, that voice, as if coming from
beautifully formed red lips, of which the lower one must curve the least
bit over; it had, too, a caressing vitality, and a kind of warm falsity.

The girl threw a laughing look back over her shoulder, and vanished
through the door into the room.

Bob Pillin remained with his back to the fire and his puppy round eyes
fixed on the air that her figure had last occupied. He was experiencing
a sensation never felt before. Those travels with a lady of Spain,
charitably conceded him by old Heythorp, had so far satisfied the
emotional side of this young man; they had stopped short at Brighton
and Scarborough, and been preserved from even the slightest intrusion of
love. A calculated and hygienic career had caused no anxiety either
to himself or his father; and this sudden swoop of something more than
admiration gave him an uncomfortable choky feeling just above his high
round collar, and in the temples a sort of buzzing--those first symptoms
of chivalry. A man of the world does not, however, succumb without a
struggle; and if his hat had not been out of reach, who knows whether he
would not have left the house hurriedly, saying to himself: "No, no,
my boy; Millicent Villas is hardly your form, when your intentions are
honourable"? For somehow that round and laughing face, bob of glistening
hair, those wide-opened grey eyes refused to awaken the beginnings of
other intentions--such is the effect of youth and innocence on even the
steadiest young men. With a kind of moral stammer, he was thinking: 'Can
I--dare I offer to see them to their tram? Couldn't I even nip out
and get the car round and send them home in it? No, I might miss
them--better stick it out here! What a jolly laugh! What a tipping
face--strawberries and cream, hay, and all that! Millicent Villas!' And
he wrote it on his cuff.

The door was opening; he heard that warm vibrating voice: "Come along,
Phyllis!"--the girl's laugh so high and fresh: "Right-o! Coming!" And
with, perhaps, the first real tremor he had ever known, he crossed