hat is the matter, my dear aunt? You seem to be
suffering under some uneasiness."

"I am suffering under your conversation," her Ladyship answered sharply.
"Money is a sore subject with me just now," she went on, with her eyes
on her nephew, watching the effect of what she said. "I have spent five
hundred pounds this morning with a scrape of my pen. And, only a
week since, I yielded to temptation and made an addition to my
picture-gallery." She looked, as she said those words, towards an
archway at the further end of the room, closed by curtains of purple
velvet. "I really tremble when I think of what that one picture cost me
before I could call it mine. A landscape by Hobbema; and the National
Gallery bidding against me. Never mind!" she concluded, consoling
herself, as usual, with considerations that were beneath her. "Hobbema
will sell at my death for a bigger price than I gave for him--that's one
comfort!" She looked again at Felix; a smile of mischievous
satisfaction began to show itself in her face. "Anything wrong with your
watch-chain?" she asked.

Felix, absently playing with his watch-chain, started as if his aunt
had suddenly awakened him. While Lady Lydiard had been speaking, his
vivacity had subsided little by little, and had left him looking so
serious and so old that his most intimate friend would hardly have known
him again. Roused by the sudden question that had been put to him, he
seemed to be casting about in his mind in search of the first excuse for
his silence that might turn up.

"I was wondering," he began, "why I miss something when I look round
this beautiful room; something familiar, you know, that I fully expected
to find here."

"Tommie?" suggested Lady Lydiard, still watching her nephew as
maliciously as ever.

"That's it!" cried Felix, seizing his excuse, and rallying his spirits.
"Why don't I hear Tommie snarling behind me; why don't I feel Tommie's
teeth in my trousers?"

The smile vanished from Lady Lydiard's face; the tone taken by her
nephew in speaking of her dog was disrespectful in the extreme.
She showed him plainly that she disapproved of it. Felix went on,
nevertheless, impenetrable to reproof of the silent sort. "Dear little
Tommie! So delightfully fat; and such an infernal temper! I don't know
whether I hate him or love him. Where is he?"

"Ill in bed," answered her ladyship, with a gravity which startled even
Felix himself. "I wish to speak to you about Tommie. You k