sob. "Oh, I'm an idiot!" she cried. "Haven't you
anything to suggest, Mr Neeld?"

He shrugged his shoulders peevishly. Her spirits fell again.

"I see! Yes, if she--if she doesn't take it properly, he'll go away
again, and I'm to be ready to stay here." Another change in the
barometer came in a flash. "But she can't help being Lady Tristram now!"

"It's all a most unjustifiable proceeding. He tricks the girl----"

"Yes, he had to. That was the only chance. If he'd told her before----"

"But isn't she in love with him?"

"Oh, you don't know the Tristrams! Oh, what are we to do?" Save running
through every kind and degree of emotion Mina seemed to find nothing to
do.

"And I'm bound to say that I consider our position most embarrassing."
Mr Neeld spoke with some warmth, with some excuse too perhaps. To
welcome a newly married couple home may be thought always to require
some tact; when it is a toss-up whether they will not part again for
ever under your very eyes the situation is not improved. Such trials
should not be inflicted on quiet old bachelors; Josiah Cholderton had
not done with his editor yet.

"We must treat it as a mere trifle," the Imp announced, fixing on the
thing which above all others she could not achieve. Yet her manner was
so confident that Neeld gasped. "And if that doesn't do, we must tell
her that the happiness of her whole life depends on what she does
to-night." Variety of treatment was evidently not to be lacking.

"I intend to take no responsibility of any kind. He's got himself into a
scrape. Let him get out of it," persisted Neeld.

"I thought you were his friend?"

"I may be excused if I consider the lady a little too."

"I suppose I don't care for Cecily? Do you mean that, Mr Neeld?"

"My dear friend, need we quarrel too?"

"Don't be stupid. Who's quarrelling? I never knew anybody so useless as
you are. Can't you do anything but sit there and talk about
responsibilities?" She was ranging about, a diminutive tiger of
unusually active habits. She had wandered round the room again before
she burst out:

"Oh, but it's something to see the end of it!"

That was his feeling too, however much he might rebuke himself for it.
Human life at first-hand had not been too plentiful with him. The Imp's
excitement infected him. "And he's back here after all!" she cried. "At
least--Heavens, they'll be here directly, Mr Neeld!"

"Yes, it's past seven," said he.

"Come into the garden. We