e stair. He had only just time to finish
his sentence--"Would it please you or annoy you?"

She answered hurriedly; for as she rose, Flossie was knocking at the
door.

"It would please me more than I can say."

"Then," he said in a voice that was too low for Flossie to hear, "you
_shall_ know it."

CHAPTER LVI

It was impossible that Rickman's intimacy with Miss Harden should pass
unnoticed by the other boarders. But it was well understood by Miss
Roots, by Flossie and by all of them, that any attentions he paid to
her were paid strictly to his editor's cousin. And if there was the
least little shade of duplicity in this explanation, his conscience
held him so far guiltless, seeing that he had adopted it more on
Lucia's account than his own. Incidentally, however, he was not
displeased that it had apparently satisfied Flossie.

But if Flossie felt no uneasiness at the approaches of Mr. Rickman and
Miss Harden, the news that Lucia was staying under the same roof with
the impossible young poet could hardly be received with complacency by
her relations. It threw Edith Jewdwine into an agony of alarm. Horace
as yet knew nothing about it; for he was abroad. Even Edith had heard
nothing until her return from her autumn holiday in Wales, when a
letter from Lucia informed her that she would be staying for the next
week or two with Sophie Roots in Tavistock Place. Edith was utterly
unprepared for her cousin's change of plans. She had not asked Lucia
to go with her to Wales; for Lucia's last idea had been to spend
September and October in Devonshire with Kitty Palliser. Edith, eager
for her holiday, had not stopped to see whether the arrangements with
Kitty were completed; and Lucia, aware of Edith's impatience, had
omitted to mention that they were not. But what made Lucia's move so
particularly trying to Edith was the circumstance that relations
between them had latterly been a little strained; and when Edith
searched her heart she found that for this unhappy tension it was she
and not Lucia who had been to blame.

And now (while Lucia was resting calmly on Mr. Rickman's sofa), in
the grave and beautiful drawing-room of the old brown house at
Hampstead a refined and fastidious little lady walked up and down in a
state of high nervous excitement. That little lady bore in her slight
way a remarkable resemblance to her brother Horace. It was Horace in
petticoats, diminutive and dark. There was the same clearness,