ple's lamps always go out with me, and so do my own, for
that matter. I'll risk it; I know the policeman, and if we meet I will
argue with him. Good-bye; don't forget we are coming to dinner to-morrow
night. It's a party, isn't it?"

"I believe so."

"What a bore, I must unpack my London dresses. Well, good-bye again."

"Good-bye, dear," answered Morris, and she was gone.

"'Dear,'" thought Mary to herself; "he hasn't called me that since I was
sixteen. I wonder why he does it now? Because I have been scolding him,
I suppose; that generally makes men affectionate."

For a while she glided forward through the grey twilight, and then began
to think again, muttering to herself:

"You idiot, Mary, why should you be pleased because he called you
'dear'? He doesn't really care two-pence about you; his blood goes no
quicker when you pass by and no slower when you stay away. Why do you
bother about him? and what made you talk all that stuff this afternoon?
Because you think he is in a queer way, and that if he goes on giving
himself up to his fancies he will become mad--yes, mad--because--Oh!
what's the use of making excuses--because you are fond of him, and
always have been fond of him from a child, and can't help it. What a
fate! To be fond of a man who hasn't the heart to care for you or for
any other woman. Perhaps, however, that's only because he hasn't found
the right one, as he might do at any time, and then----"

"Where are you going to, and where's your light?" shouted a hoarse voice
from the pathway on which she was unlawfully riding.

"My good man, I wish I knew," answered Mary, blandly.

Morris, for whom the day never seemed long enough, was a person who
breakfasted punctually at half-past eight, whereas Colonel Monk, to
whom--at any rate at Monksland--the day was often too long, generally
breakfasted at ten. To his astonishment, however, on entering the
dining-room upon the morrow of his interview in the workshop with Mary,
he found his father seated at the head of the table.

"This means a 'few words' with me about something disagreeable," thought
Morris to himself as he dabbed viciously at an evasive sausage. He
was not fond of these domestic conversations. Nor was he in the least
reassured by his father's airy and informed comments upon the contents
of the "Globe," which always arrived by post, and the marvel of its
daily "turnover" article, whereof the perpetual variety throughout the
decades con