o his muscles.

"I'd be out of the country before they came--with you under my arm," he
said, with a laugh.

"That would be very forgiving--but hardly proper, would it, Chat? Unless
we were--Oh, but what nonsense! Why don't you like my poor Institute?"

He relapsed into ill-humor, and it developed into downright rudeness.

"It's nothing to me how people make fools of themselves," he said.

Jenny did not always resent his rudeness. But she never compromised her
right to resent it. She exercised the right now, rising with
instantaneous dignity. "It's time for us to go, Chat. Mr. Austin, will
you kindly look after Mr. Octon's comfort for the rest of the evening?"
She swept out, Chat pattering after her in a hen-like flutter. Octon
drank off his glass of wine with a muttered oath. Excellent as the port
was, it seemed to do him no good. He leaned over to me--perfectly sober,
be it understood (I never saw him affected by liquor), but desperately
savage. "I won't stand that," he said. "If she sticks to that, I'll
never come back to this house when I've walked out of it to-night."

I was learning how to deal with his tempests. "I shall hope to have the
pleasure of encountering you elsewhere," I observed politely. "Meanwhile
I have my orders. Pray help yourself to port."

He did that, but at the same moment hurled at me the order--"Take her
that message."

"There's pen and ink behind you, Octon."

Temper is a terrible master--and needs looking after even as a servant.
He jumped up, wrote something--what I could only guess--and rang the
bell violently. I could imagine Jenny's smile--I did not ring like that.

"Take that to your mistress," he commanded. "It's the address she
wanted." But he had carefully closed the envelope, and probably Loft had
his private opinion.

We sat in silence till the answer came. "Miss Driver says she is much
obliged, sir, for the address," said Loft as, with a wave of his hand,
he introduced a footman with coffee, "and she needn't trouble you any
more in the matter--as you have another engagement to-night."

Under Loft's eyes he had pulled himself together; he received the
message with an appearance of indifference which quite supported the
idea that it related to some trifle and that he really had to go away
early; I had not given him credit for such a power of suddenly regaining
self-control. He nodded, and said lightly to me, "Well, since Miss
Driver is so kind, I'll be off in another t