rtload of you."

Mr. Taynton, like his laugh, was comfortable and middle-aged. Solicitors
are supposed to be sharp-faced and fox-like, but his face was
well-furnished and comely, and his rather bald head beamed with
benevolence and dinner.

"My dear boy," he said, "and it is your birthday--I cannot honour
either you or this wonderful port more properly than by drinking your
health in it."

He began and finished his glass to the health he had so neatly proposed,
and Morris laughed.

"Thank you very much," he said. "Mother, do send the port round. What an
inhospitable woman!"

Mrs. Assheton rose.

"I will leave you to be more hospitable than me, then, dear," she said.

"Shall we go, Madge? Indeed, I am afraid you must, if you are to catch
the train to Falmer."

Madge Templeton got up with her hostess, and the two men rose too. She
had been sitting next Morris, and the boy looked at her eagerly.

"It's too bad, your having to go," he said. "But do you think I may come
over to-morrow, in the afternoon some time, and see you and Lady
Templeton?"

Madge paused a moment.

"I am so sorry," she said, "but we shall be away all day. We shan't be
back till quite late."

"Oh, what a bore," said he, "and I leave again on Friday. Do let me come
and see you off then."

But Mrs. Assheton interposed.

"No, dear," she said, "I am going to have five minutes' talk with Madge
before she goes and we don't want you. Look after Mr. Taynton. I know he
wants to talk to you and I want to talk to Madge."

Mr. Taynton, when the door had closed behind the ladies, sat down again
with a rather obvious air of proposing to enjoy himself. It was quite
true that he had a few pleasant things to say to Morris, it is also true
that he immensely appreciated the wonderful port which glowed, ruby-like,
in the nearly full decanter that lay to his hand. And, above all, he,
with his busy life, occupied for the most part in innumerable small
affairs, revelled in the sense of leisure and serene smoothness which
permeated Mrs. Assheton's house. He was still a year or two short of
sixty, and but for his very bald and shining head would have seemed
younger, so fresh was he in complexion, so active, despite a certain
reassuring corpulency, was he in his movements. But when he dined
quietly like this, at Mrs. Assheton's, he would willingly have sacrificed
the next five years of his life if he could have been assured on really
reliable authority--the a