r how you can be so silly," says Miss Kavanagh disdainfully.
Will he _never_ go away! If he stays, and if--the other--comes----

"Silly! my good child. _How_ silly! Why everything goes to prove the
probability of my statement. The taste for articles of _vertu_--for
antiquities--for fossils of all descriptions that characterized them
then, has lived to the present day. _Then_ they worried after old china,
and who shall deny that now they have an overwhelming affection for old
clo'."

"Well; your folly doesn't concern me," says Miss Kavanagh, gathering up
her skirts with an evident intention of shaking off the dust of his
presence from her feet and quitting him.

"I am sorry that you should consider it folly," says Mr. Browne
sorrowfully. "I should not have said so much about it perhaps but that I
wanted to prove to you that in calling _you_ a fleshpot I only meant
to----"

"I won't be called that," interrupts Miss Kavanagh angrily. "It's
_horrid_! It makes me feel quite _fat_! Now, once for all, Dicky, I
forbid it. I won't have it."

"I don't see how you are to get out of it," says Mr. Browne, shaking his
head and hands in wild deprecation. "Fleshpots were desirable
articles--you're another--ergo--you're a fleshpot. See the argument?"

"No I don't," indignantly. "I see only you--and--I wish I _didn't_."

"Very rude; _very_!" says Mr. Browne, regretfully. "Yet I entreat thee
not to leave me without one other word. Follow up the argument--_do_.
Give me an answer to it."

"Not one," walking to the door.

"That's because it is unanswerable," says Mr. Browne complacently. "You
are beaten, you----"

There is a sound outside the door; Joyce with her hand on the handle of
it, steps back and looks round nervously at Dicky. A quick color has
dyed her cheeks; instinctively she moves a little to one side and gives
a rapid glance into a long mirror.

"I don't think really he could find a fault," says Mr. Browne
mischievously. "I should think there will be a good deal of hankering
going on to-night."

Miss Kavanagh has only just barely time to wither him, when Beauclerk
comes hurriedly in.

CHAPTER XI.

"Thinkest thou there are no serpents in the world
But those who slide along the grassy sod,
And sting the luckless foot that presses them?
There are, who in the path of social life
Do bask their spotted skins in fortune's son,
And sting the soul."

"Oh, there you are," cries he jovi