me luncheon.'

'Ah, that's all very well!' sobbed Avice. 'B-b-but if you had been
m-married so long as I have, y-you wouldn't say go back like that!'

'What is it all about?' inquired Pierston.

'He said that if he were to die I--I--should be looking out for somebody
with fair hair and grey eyes, just--just to spite him in his grave,
because he's dark, and he's quite sure I don't like dark people! And
then he said--But I won't be so treacherous as to tell any more about
him! I wish--'

'Avice, your mother did this very thing. And she went back to her
husband. Now you are to do the same. Let me see; there is a train--'

'She must have something to eat first. Sit down, dear.'

The question was settled by the arrival of Henri himself at the end
of luncheon, with a very anxious and pale face. Pierston went off to a
business meeting, and left the young couple to adjust their differences
in their own way.

His business was, among kindred undertakings which followed the
extinction of the Well-Beloved and other ideals, to advance a scheme for
the closing of the old natural fountains in the Street of Wells, because
of their possible contamination, and supplying the townlet with water
from pipes, a scheme that was carried out at his expense, as is well
known. He was also engaged in acquiring some old moss-grown, mullioned
Elizabethan cottages, for the purpose of pulling them down because
they were damp; which he afterwards did, and built new ones with hollow
walls, and full of ventilators.

At present he is sometimes mentioned as 'the late Mr. Pierston' by
gourd-like young art-critics and journalists; and his productions are
alluded to as those of a man not without genius, whose powers were
insufficiently recognized in his lifetime.

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