usbanded a sigh. "Poor James!"

To pity James was a new experience. She felt all the better for it,
and was able to afford a lighter hand when they met at dinner. It may
even be that James himself had thought the time come for a little
relaxation of _askesis_, or he may have had something to forestall: he
seldom spoke of his affairs without design. At any rate, he told her
that Francis Lingen had been with him, and that Urquhart was likely to
be of use. "I've written to him, anyhow. He will do as he thinks well.
Urquhart is a sharp man of business."

Lucy said, "He struck me so. I thought that he could never have any
doubt of his own mind."

James wriggled his eyeglass, to wedge it more firmly. "Ah, you noticed
that? Very acute of you, Lucy. We may have a meeting before long--to
arrange the whole thing.... It's a lot of money ... ten thousand
pounds.... Your Francis is an expensive young man ... or let's say
_ci-devant jeune homme_."

"Why do you call him 'my' Francis?" she asked--rather mischievous than
artless.

The eyeglass dropped with a click and had to be sought. "Well, I can
hardly call him _mine_, could I?"

"I don't see why he should be anybody's," said Lucy, "except his own."

"My dear girl," said Macartney, "_himself_ is the last person he
belongs to. Francis Lingen will always belong to somebody. I must say
that he has chosen very wisely. You do him a great deal of good."

"That's very nice of you," she said. "I own that I like Francis
Lingen. He's very gentle, not too foolish, and good to look at. You
must own that he's extremely elegant."

"Oh," said James, tossing up his foot, "elegant! He is what his good
Horace would have called 'a very pretty fellow'--and what I call 'a
nice girl.'"

"I'm sure he isn't worth so much savagery," Lucy said. "You are like
Ugolino--and poor Francis is your _fiero pasto_."

James instantly corrected himself. "My besetting sin, Lucy. But I must
observe--" He applied his glazed eye to her feet--"the colour of your
stockings, my friend. Ha! a tinge of blue, upon my oath!" So it passed
off, and that night when, after his half-hour with the evening paper
in the drawing-room, he prepared to leave her, she held out her hand
to him, and said good night. He took it, waved it; and then stooped to
her offered cheek and pecked it delicately. The good girl felt quite
elate. She did so like people to be kind to her.

Half an hour later yet, in her evening post was a letter