othness about the plump little lady that would be a security
against friction. She was not great at understanding; but, taking it
all together, she was now in an infinitely better position for
understanding him than she had been two weeks ago. Besides, it was
after all a simple question of figures; and Flossie's attitude to
figures was, unlike his own, singularly uninfluenced by passion. She
would take the sensible, practical view.

The sensible practical view was precisely what Flossie did take. But
her capabilities of passion he had again misjudged.

He chose his moment with discretion, when time and place and Flossie's
mood were most propitious. The time was Sunday evening, the place was
the Regent's Park, Flossie's mood was gentle and demure. She had been
very nice to him since his father's death, and had shown him many
careful small attentions which, with his abiding sense of his own
shortcomings towards her, he had found extremely touching. She seemed
to him somehow a different woman, not perhaps so pretty as she had
been, but nicer. He may have been the dupe of an illusory effect of
toilette, for Flossie was in black. She had discussed the propriety of
mourning with Miss Bishop, and wore it to-day for the first time with
a pretty air of solemnity mingled with satisfaction in her own
delicate intimation that she was one with her lover in his grief. She
had not yet discovered that black was unbecoming to her, which would
have been fatal to the mood.

The flowers were gay in the Broad Walk, Flossie tried to be gay too;
and called on him to admire their beauty. They sat down together on a
seat in the embrasure of a bed of chrysanthemums. Flossie was
interested in everything, in the chrysanthemums, in the weather and in
the passers-by--most particularly interested, he noticed, in the
family groups. Her black eyes, that glanced so restlessly at the men
and so jealously at the women, sank softly on the children, happy and
appeased. Poor Flossie. He had long ago divined her heart. He did his
best to please her; he sat down when she told him to sit down, stared
when she told him to stare, and relapsed into his now habitual
attitude of dejection. A little girl toddled past him in play; stopped
at his knees and touched them with her hand and rubbed her small body
against them, chuckling with delight.

"The dear little mite," said Flossie; "she's taken quite a fancy to
you, Keith." Her face was soft and shy under her bla