ad, you are on the whole trying your hardest--are you not?"

Denis, a little startled by the palpable injustice of this remark, rose,
and resting the points of his fingers lightly on the table, leant
forward. "Ye--yes, sir," he stammered.

"'Ow old are you?" Sir Joseph continued.

"Twenty-eight, sir."

Sir Joseph repeated the words. "How much are you getting?"

"Eight hundred, sir," Denis replied.

Sir Joseph turned sharply on his heel and slightly accelerated his pace
across the rug.

"H'm! Well, I propose to make it a thousand," he said thoughtfully.

Denis Malster smiled nervously. "Thank you, Sir Joseph."

"I propose to do this," continued the baronet, "because I think you must
be wanting to marry, and because I think it wrong that a man of your age
should be prevented from marrying owing to lack of means. D'you
understand? Only that!"

"I think it most considerate of you," Denis faltered again.

"Well, that's settled," said Sir Joseph drily. "But," he added, always
on tenterhooks of anxiety lest one of his staff should begin to think
too much of himself, "I should like you to be quite clear about my
reasons for the change. I don't want you to run away with the notion
that I am giving you a rise because I am entirely satisfied with your
work."

As he said this Sir Joseph resumed his seat, and pulled in his heavy
chair as smartly as he was able, with the air of a man who had neatly
achieved his object without abandoning the usual safe-guards.

It was a minute to six when the messenger announced Lord Henry Highbarn,
and the moment the announcement was made, Denis, reaching for his hat
and stick, took leave of his chief. He strode out into the street with a
sprightly gait, humming as he went:

"I don't adore the girl in blue
For all her family's after you."

* * * * *

There is probably in most men a sense of quality, a power of divination
in regard to value which, on occasions when they are confronted by a
stranger whose worth they do not know, informs them immediately of the
comparative rarity or commonness of his type. This sense may at first be
baffled by the delusive disguises in which men sometimes present
themselves, but as a rule a chance word, an artless gesture, or even a
glance, quickly corrects the initial error of the eye, and in a moment
the original estimate is adjusted to the unmistakable evidence of a
definite quality.

When this peculiar app