rubbing
his hands together and looking from side to side.

"I'm a domestic man," he said suddenly. "A domestic man in a serious
line of life; and I never thought to have anything like this in my
family--never! It's been--well, I can't tell you what it's been!"

Gyp took up her sunshade. She felt that she must get away; at any moment
he might say something she could not bear--and the smell of mutton rising
fast!

"I am sorry," she said again; "good-bye"; and moved past him to the door.
She heard him breathing hard as he followed her to open it, and thought:
'If only--oh! please let him be silent till I get outside!' Mr. Wagge
passed her and put his hand on the latch of the front door. His little
piggy eyes scanned her almost timidly.

"Well," he said, "I'm very glad to have the privilege of your
acquaintance; and, if I may say so, you 'ave--you 'ave my 'earty
sympathy. Good-day."

The door once shut behind her, Gyp took a long breath and walked swiftly
away. Her cheeks were burning; and, with a craving for protection, she
put up her sunshade. But the girl's white face came up again before her,
and the sound of her words:

"Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, I wish I was dead! I DO!"

XVI

Gyp walked on beneath her sunshade, making unconsciously for the peace of
trees. Her mind was a whirl of impressions--Daphne Wing's figure against
the door, Mr. Wagge's puggy grey-bearded countenance, the red
pampas-grass, the blue bowl, Rosek's face swooping at her, her last
glimpse of her baby asleep under the trees!

She reached Kensington Gardens, turned into that walk renowned for the
beauty of its flowers and the plainness of the people who frequent it,
and sat down on a bench. It was near the luncheon-hour; nursemaids,
dogs, perambulators, old gentlemen--all were hurrying a little toward
their food. They glanced with critical surprise at this pretty young
woman, leisured and lonely at such an hour, trying to find out what was
wrong with her, as one naturally does with beauty--bow legs or something,
for sure, to balance a face like that! But Gyp noticed none of them,
except now and again a dog which sniffed her knees in passing. For
months she had resolutely cultivated insensibility, resolutely refused to
face reality; the barrier was forced now, and the flood had swept her
away. "Proceedings!" Mr. Wagge had said. To those who shrink from
letting their secret affairs be known even by their nearest friends, the
no