saying that when he came he
would come after dinner, unless he had certified to the contrary
beforehand. Then, after dinner, would come on him the temptation of
returning to his chambers, and so it would go on with him from day to
day.

On this Friday evening the girls almost expected him, as he rarely
let a week pass without visiting them, and still more rarely came to
them on a Saturday. He found them out upon the lawn, or rather on the
brink of the river, and with them was standing a young man whom he
knew well. He kissed each of the girls, and then gave his hand to the
young man. "I am glad to see you, Ralph," he said. "Have you been
here long?"

"As much as an hour or two, I fear. Patience will tell you. I meant
to have got back by the 9.15 from Putney; but I have been smoking,
and dreaming, and talking, till now it is nearly ten."

"There is a train at 10.30," said the eldest Miss Underwood.

"And another at 11.15," said the young man.

Sir Thomas was especially anxious to be alone with his daughters, but
he could not tell the guest to go. Nor was he justified in feeling
any anger at his presence there,--though he did experience some prick
of conscience in the matter. If it was wrong that his daughters
should be visited by a young man in his absence, the fault lay in his
absence, rather than with the young man for coming, or with the girls
for receiving him. The young man had been a ward of his own, and for
a year or two in former times had been so intimate in his house as to
live with his daughters almost as an elder brother might have done.
But young Ralph Newton had early in life taken rooms for himself
in London, had then ceased to be a ward, and had latterly,--so Sir
Thomas understood,--lived such a life as to make him unfit to be the
trusted companion of his two girls. And yet there had been nothing in
his mode of living to make it necessary that he should be absolutely
banished from the villa. He had spent more money than was fitting,
and had got into debt, and Sir Thomas had had trouble about his
affairs. He too was an orphan,--and the nephew and the heir of an old
country squire whom he never saw. What money he had received from his
father he had nearly spent, and it was rumoured of him that he had
raised funds by post-obits on his uncle's life. Of all these things
more will be told hereafter;--but Sir Thomas,--though he had given no
instruction on the subject, and was averse even to allude to it,-