days after her arrival she was content to sit in that very
respectable drawing-room, waiting for the callers who never came. She
could not have taken the callers very seriously either (what _did_ Mrs.
Nevill Tyson take seriously, I should like to know?), or else, surely she
would have had some little regard for appearances; she would never have
risked being caught at four o'clock in the afternoon sitting on Tyson's
knee, doing all sorts of absurd things to his face. First, she stroked
his hair straight down over his forehead, which had a singularly
brutalizing effect, so that she was obliged to push it back again and
make it all neat with one of the little tortoise-shell combs that kept
her own curls in order. Then she lifted up his mustache till the lip
curled in a dreadful mechanical smile, showing a slightly crooked,
slightly prominent tooth.

"Oh, what an ugly tooth!" said Mrs. Nevill Tyson; and she let the lip
fall again like a curtain. "How could I marry a man with a tooth like
that! Do you know, poor papa used to say you were just like
Phorc--Phorc--something with a fork in it."

"Phorcyas?"

"Yes. How clever you are! Who was Phorc-y-as?" Mrs. Nevill Tyson made a
face over the word.

"It's another name for Mephistopheles." (Tyson knew his Goethe better
than his classics.)

"And Mephistopheles is another name for--the devil! Oh!" She took the
tips of his ears with the tips of her fingers and held his head straight
while she stared into his eyes. "Look me straight in the face now. No
blinking. Are you the devil, I wonder?" She put her head on one side as
if she were considering him judicially from an entirely new point of
view. "I wonder why papa didn't like you?"

"He didn't think me good enough for his little girl, and he was quite
right there."

"He didn't mind so much when I got engaged to Willie Payne. He said we
were admirably suited to each other. That was because Willie was a fool.
Oh--I forgot you didn't know!"

"Ah, I know now. And how many more, Mrs. Molly?"

"No more--only you. And Willie doesn't count. It was ages ago, when I was
at school. Look here." She pushed back the ruffles of her sleeve and
showed him a little livid mark running across the back of her hand. "Did
I ever tell you what that meant? It means that they shoved Willie's
letters into the big fireplace--with the tongs--and that _I_ stuck
my hand between the bars and pulled them out."

"I say--you must have been rather gone on