unusually tiresome old woman. His mother had liked her of
course. But he could hardly have been expected to do so. Moreover, he
had a shrewd notion that she must have been a perfect Tartar to live
with. Miss Marsh might be busy or tired out with the ordeal of the day,
but as she also might be leaving almost immediately and he wanted to see
her, he had not hesitated to come, once he was sure that the Wickham
relatives had departed. That he would find the late Miss Wickham's
companion indulging in any show of grief for her late employer, had
never entered his head.

He was a good-looking, if rather vacuous, young man with a long, elegant
body. His dark, sleek hair was always carefully brushed and his small
mustache trimmed and curled. His beautiful clothes suggested the
fashionable tailors of Savile Row. Everything about him--his tie, his
handkerchief protruding from his breast pocket, his boots--bore the
stamp of the very latest thing.

"I say, I'm awfully sorry to blow in like this," he said airily.

He beamed on Nora, whom he had always regarded as much too pretty a girl
to be what he secretly called a 'frozy companion' and sent a quick
inquiring glance at Miss Pringle, whom he vaguely remembered to have
seen somewhere in Tunbridge Wells. But then Tunbridge Wells was filled
with frumps. Oh, yes. He remembered now. She was usually to be seen
leading a pair of Poms on a leash.

"You see, I didn't know if you'd be staying on here," he went on,
retaining Nora's hand, "and I wanted to catch you. I'm off in a day or
two myself."

"Won't you sit down? Mr. Hornby--Miss Pringle."

"How d'you do?"

Mr. Hornby's glance skimmed lightly over Miss Pringle's surface and
returned at once to Nora's more pleasing face.

"Everything go off O. K.?" he inquired genially.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Funeral, I mean. Mother went. Regular outing for her."

Miss Pringle stiffened visibly in her chair and began to study the
pattern in the rug at her feet with an absorbed interest. Nora was
conscious of a wild desire to laugh, but with a heroic effort succeeded
in keeping her face straight out of deference to her elderly friend.

"Really?" she said, in a faint voice.

"Oh, yes," went on young Hornby with unabated cheerfulness. "You see,
mother's getting on. I'm the child of her old age--Benjamin, don't you
know. Benjamin and Sarah, you know," he explained, apparently for the
benefit of Miss Pringle, as he pointedly turned to address