ed reflecting upon the dialogue, which
certainly had meant nothing for her in any graver sense.

'Now, that's what the books call _flirtation_,' she said to herself. 'I
think I can do that.'

And on the whole she could, vastly better than might have been expected
of her birth and breeding.

At six o'clock a note was delivered for her. Richard wrote from an hotel
in the neighbourhood, asking her to come to him. She found him in a
private sitting-room, taking a meal.

'Why didn't you come to the house?' she asked. 'You knew mother never
comes down-stairs.'

Richard looked at her with lowered brows.

'You mean to say she's doing that in earnest?'

'That she is She comes down early in the morning and gets all the food
she wants for the day. I heard her cooking something in a frying-pan
to-day. She hasn't been out of the house yet.'

'Does she know about Jane?'

'No. I know what it would be if I went and told her.'

He ate in silence. Alice waited.

'You must go and see Emma,' was his next remark. 'Tell her there's a
grave in Manor Park Cemetery; her father and mother were buried there,
you know. Keene 'll look after it all and he'll come and tell you what
to do.'

'Why did you come up?'

'Oh, I couldn't talk about these things in letters. You'll have to tell
mother; she might want to go to the funeral.'

'I don't see why I should do all your disagreeable work, Dick!'

'Very well, don't do it,' he replied sullenly, throwing down his knife
and fork.

A scene of wrangling followed, without violence, but of the kind
which is at once a cause and an effect of demoralisation. The old
disagreements between them had been in another tone, at all events on
Richard's side, for they had arisen from his earnest disapproval of
frivolities and the like. Richard could no longer speak in that way. To
lose the power of honest reproof in consequence of a moral lapse is to
any man a wide-reaching calamity; to a man of Mutimer's calibre it meant
disaster of which the end could not be foreseen.

Of course Alice yielded; her affection and Richard's superior force
always made it a foregone result that she should do so.

'And you won't come and see mother?' she asked.

'No. She's behaving foolishly.'

'It's precious dull at home, I can tell you. I can't go on much longer
without friends of some kind. I've a good mind to marry Mr. Keene, just
for a change.'

Richard started up, with his fist on the table.

'Do you mean t