n the house would interfere with
her work. On the contrary, her work was likely to interfere with his
comfort. He was fond of his niece, but he disliked her habit of
reading passages from her MSS. aloud in the evenings. She was very
much absorbed in her novel-writing, and took her work with a
seriousness which struck the judge as ridiculous.

"I'll dine with you occasionally," he said, "but I shall put up at the
hotel. By the way, Milly, am I your tenant or are you mine? I left
all the arrangements in your hands."

"I took the house and the fishing," she said. "The agent man wouldn't
let one without the other; but you have to pay most of the rent. The
salmon are the really valuable part of the property, it appears."

"All right," said Sir Gilbert; "so long as the fishing is good I won't
quarrel with you over my share of the rent. The house would only have
been a nuisance to me. I should have had to bring over servants, and
that would have worried your aunt. Ah! Your time's up, I see.
Good-bye, Milly, good-bye. Take care of yourself, and don't get mixed
up with shady people in your search for originality. I'll start this
day week as soon as ever I get your aunt settled down at Bournemouth."

Millicent King, Sir Gilbert Hawkesby's niece, was a young woman of some
little importance in the world. The patrons of the circulating
libraries knew her as Ena Dunkeld, and shook their heads over her. The
gentlemen who add to the meagre salaries they earn in Government
offices by writing reviews knew her under both her names, for no
literary secrets are hid from them. They praised her novels publicly,
and in private yawned over her morality. Many people, her aunt Lady
Hawkesby among them, very strongly disapproved of her novels. Certain
problems, so these ladies maintained, ought to be discussed only in
scientific books, labelled "poison" for the safety of the public, and
ought never to be discussed at all by young women. Millicent King,
rendered obstinate by these criticisms, plunged deeper and deeper into
a kind of mire which, after a time, she began to dislike very much.
She had in reality simple tastes of a domestic kind, and might have
been very happy sewing baby clothes if she had married a peaceable man
and kept out of literary society. Fortunately, or unfortunately--the
choice of the adverb depends upon the views taken of the value of
detailed analysis of marriage problems--Miss King had not come acro