right now, dear,
and Uncle Simon has behaved excellently--far better than I expected.
We shall go to Italy for the honeymoon and need not hurry back until
we--well, say until we quarrel."

"In that case we shall live in Italy for the rest of our lives," said
Lucy with twinkling eyes; "but we must come back in a year and take a
studio in Chelsea."

"Why not in Gartley? Remember, the Professor will be lonely."

"No, he won't. Mrs. Jasher, as I told you, intends to marry him."

"He might not wish to marry her"

"That doesn't matter," rejoined Lucy, with the cleverness of a woman.
"She can manage to bring the marriage about. Besides, I want to break
with the old life here, and begin quite a new one with you. When I
am your wife and Mrs. Jasher is my step-father's, everything will be
capitally arranged."

"Well, I hope so," said Archie heartily, "for I want you all to myself
and have no desire to share you with anyone else. But I say," he glanced
at his watch; "it is getting towards nine o'clock, and I am desperately
hungry. Can't we go to dinner?"

"Not until Mrs. Jasher arrives," said Lucy primly.

"Oh, bother--!"

Hope, being quite exasperated with hunger, would have launched out into
a speech condemning the widow's unpunctuality, when in the hall below
the drawing-room was heard the sound of the door opening and closing.
Without doubt this was Mrs. Jasher arriving at last, and Lucy ran out
of the room and down the stairs to welcome her in her eagerness to get
Archie seated at the dinner table. The young man lingered by the open
door of the drawing-room, ready to welcome the widow, when he heard Lucy
utter an exclamation of surprise and became aware that she was ascending
the stairs along with Professor Braddock. At once he reflected there
would be trouble, since he was in the house with Lucy, and lacked the
necessary chaperon which Braddock's primitive Anglo-Saxon instincts
insisted upon.

"I did not know you were returning to-night," Lucy was saying when she
re-entered the drawing-room with her step-father.

"I arrived by the six o'clock train," explained the Professor, unwinding
a large red scarf from his neck, and struggling out of his overcoat with
the assistance of his daughter. "Ha, Hope, good evening."

"Where have you been since?" asked Lucy, throwing the Professor's coat
and wraps on to a chair.

"With Mrs. Jasher," said Braddock, warming his plump hands at the fire.
"So you must blame me that s