s
perfunctorily made. Laura picked up her articles, answering that he
certainly could so ask her--she was free. Yet not her expression either
could be called an ardent response. Then she blinked more and more
quickly and put her handkerchief to her face. She was weeping violently.

He did not move or try to comfort her in any way. What had come between
them? No living person. They had been lovers. There was now no
material obstacle whatever to their union. But there was the insistent
shadow of that unconscious one; the thin figure of him, moving to and fro
in front of the ghastly furnace in the gloom of Durnover Moor.

Yet Vannicock called upon Laura when he was in the neighbourhood, which
was not often; but in two years, as if on purpose to further the marriage
which everybody was expecting, the ---st Foot returned to Budmouth Regis.

Thereupon the two could not help encountering each other at times. But
whether because the obstacle had been the source of the love, or from a
sense of error, and because Mrs. Maumbry bore a less attractive look as a
widow than before, their feelings seemed to decline from their former
incandescence to a mere tepid civility. What domestic issues supervened
in Vannicock's further story the man in the oriel never knew; but Mrs.
Maumbry lived and died a widow.

1900.

THE WAITING SUPPER

CHAPTER I

Whoever had perceived the yeoman standing on Squire Everard's lawn in the
dusk of that October evening fifty years ago, might have said at first
sight that he was loitering there from idle curiosity. For a large five-
light window of the manor-house in front of him was unshuttered and
uncurtained, so that the illuminated room within could be scanned almost
to its four corners. Obviously nobody was ever expected to be in this
part of the grounds after nightfall.

The apartment thus swept by an eye from without was occupied by two
persons; they were sitting over dessert, the tablecloth having been
removed in the old-fashioned way. The fruits were local, consisting of
apples, pears, nuts, and such other products of the summer as might be
presumed to grow on the estate. There was strong ale and rum on the
table, and but little wine. Moreover, the appointments of the dining-
room were simple and homely even for the date, betokening a countrified
household of the smaller gentry, without much wealth or ambition--formerly
a numerous class, but now in great part ousted by