my dear, darling Tillie! It seems like a long eternity since last we
met. I've been so beastly miserable, Matilda!"

"You do seem to have got thinner in the face, Leander dear," said
Matilda, compassionately. "What _have_ you been doing while I've been
away?"

"Only wishing my dearest girl back, that's all _I've_ been doing."

"What! haven't you given yourself any enjoyment at all--not gone out
anywhere all the time?"

"Not once--leastwise, that is to say----" A guilty memory of Rosherwich
made him bungle here.

"Why, of course I didn't expect you to stop indoors all the time," said
Matilda, noticing the amendment, "so long as you never went where you
wouldn't take me."

Oh, conscience, conscience! But Rosherwich didn't count--it was outside
the radius; and besides, he _hadn't_ enjoyed himself.

"Well," he said, "I did go out one evening, to hear a lecture on
Astronomy at the Town Hall, in the Gray's Inn Road; but then I had the
ticket given me by a customer, and I reely was surprised to find how
regular the stars was in their habits, comets and all. But my 'Tilda is
the only star of the evening for me, to-night. I don't want to talk
about anything else."

The diversion was successful, and Matilda asked no more inconvenient
questions. Presently she happened to cough slightly, and he touched
accusingly the light summer cloak she was wearing.

"You're not dressed warm enough for a night like this," he said, with a
lover's concern. "Haven't you got anything thicker to put on than that?"

"I haven't bought my winter things yet," said Matilda; "it was so mild,
that I thought I'd wait till I could afford it better. But I've chosen
the very thing I mean to buy. You know Mrs. Twilling's, at the top of
the Row, the corner shop? Well, in the window there's a perfectly lovely
long cloak, all lined with squirrel's fur, and with those nice oxidized
silver fastenings. A cloak like that lasts ever so long, and will always
look neat and quiet; and any one can wear it without being stared
after; so I mean to buy it as soon as it turns really cold."

"Ah!" said he, "I can't have you ketching cold, you know; it ain't
summer any longer, and I--I've been thinking we must give up our evening
strolls together for the present."

"When you've just been saying how miserable you've been without them.
Oh, Leander!"

"Without _you_," he amended lamely. "I shall see you at aunt's, of
course; only we'd better suspend the walks while