'

'How often have I told you always to ask strangers' names when they come
to the door!' Aunt Annie's whisper became angry. 'Go and see.'

Henry hoped and feared, feared and hoped. But he knew not where to look.

Sarah returned and said: 'The young lady's name is Foster, sir.'

'Oh!' said Henry, bursting into speech as some plants burst suddenly and
brilliantly into blossom. 'Miss Foster, eh? It's the lady who called at
the office to-night. Show her into the front-room, Sarah, and light the
gas. I'll come in a minute I wonder what she wants.'

'You didn't say it was a lady,' said his mother.

'No,' he admitted; his tongue was unloosed now on the subject. 'And I
didn't say it was a lady-journalist, either. The truth is,' this liar
proceeded with an effrontery which might have been born of incessant
practice, but was not, 'I meant it as a surprise for you. I've been
interviewed this afternoon, for a lady's paper. And I wouldn't mind
betting--I wouldn't mind betting,' he repeated, 'that she's come for my
photograph.'

All this was whispered.

Henry had guessed correctly. It was the question of a portrait which
Miss Foster plunged into immediately he entered the drawing-room. She
had forgotten it utterly--she had been so nervous. 'So I ran down here
to-night,' she said, 'because if I send in my stuff and the portrait
to-morrow morning, it may be in time for next week's issue. Now, don't
say you haven't got a photograph of yourself, Mr. Knight. Don't say
that! What a pretty, old-fashioned drawing-room! Oh, there's the very
thing!'

She pointed to a framed photograph on the plush-covered mantelpiece.

'The very thing, is it?' said Henry. He was feeling his feet now, the
dog. 'Well, you shall have it, then.' And he took the photograph out of
the frame and gave it to her.

No! she wouldn't stay, not a minute, not a second. One moment her
delicious presence filled the drawing-room (he was relieved to hear her
call it a pretty, old-fashioned drawing-room, because, as the
drawing-room of a person important enough to be interviewed, it had
seemed to him somewhat less than mediocre), and the next moment she had
gone. By a singular coincidence, Aunt Annie was descending the stairs
just as Henry showed Miss Foster out of the house; the stairs commanded
the lobby and the front-door.

On his return to the dining-room and the companionship of his relatives,
Henry was conscious of a self-preserving instinct which drove him