ur money in lime, and things
you know nothing about! Who told you?" and ascertaining what they had
been told, he would go away, and, making inquiries in the City, would
perhaps invest some of his own money in the concern.

It was about the middle of dinner, just in fact as the saddle of mutton
had been brought in by Smither, that Mrs. MacAnder, looking airily round,
said: "Oh! and whom do you think I passed to-day in Richmond Park?
You'll never guess--Mrs. Soames and--Mr. Bosinney. They must have been
down to look at the house!"

Winifred Dartie coughed, and no one said a word. It was the piece of
evidence they had all unconsciously been waiting for.

To do Mrs. MacAnder justice, she had been to Switzerland and the Italian
lakes with a party of three, and had not heard of Soames' rupture with
his architect. She could not tell, therefore, the profound impression
her words would make.

Upright and a little flushed, she moved her small, shrewd eyes from face
to face, trying to gauge the effect of her words. On either side of her
a Hayman boy, his lean, taciturn, hungry face turned towards his plate,
ate his mutton steadily.

These two, Giles and Jesse, were so alike and so inseparable that they
were known as the Dromios. They never talked, and seemed always
completely occupied in doing nothing. It was popularly supposed that
they were cramming for an important examination. They walked without hats
for long hours in the Gardens attached to their house, books in their
hands, a fox-terrier at their heels, never saying a word, and smoking all
the time. Every morning, about fifty yards apart, they trotted down
Campden Hill on two lean hacks, with legs as long as their own, and every
morning about an hour later, still fifty yards apart, they cantered up
again. Every evening, wherever they had dined, they might be observed
about half-past ten, leaning over the balustrade of the Alhambra
promenade.

They were never seen otherwise than together; in this way passing their
lives, apparently perfectly content.

Inspired by some dumb stirring within them of the feelings of gentlemen,
they turned at this painful moment to Mrs. MacAnder, and said in
precisely the same voice: "Have you seen the...?"

Such was her surprise at being thus addressed that she put down her fork;
and Smither, who was passing, promptly removed her plate. Mrs. MacAnder,
however, with presence of mind, said instantly: "I must have a little
more