sked.

"Something I have been telling Emily," she answered, laughing even a
trifle wildly. "You are too young to hear such things. You must be kept
respectable at any cost."

He grinned, but faintly scowled at the same time.

"You've upset something," he remarked, looking at the carpet.

"I have, indeed," said Hester. "A cup of tea which was half milk. It
will leave a grease spot on the carpet. That won't be respectable."

When she had tumbled about among native servants as a child, she had
learned to lie quickly, and she was very ready of resource.

Chapter Nineteen

As she heard the brougham draw up in the wet street before the door,
Mrs. Warren allowed her book to fall closed upon her lap, and her
attractive face awakened to an expression of agreeable expectation, in
itself denoting the existence of interesting and desirable qualities in
the husband at the moment inserting his latch-key in the front door
preparatory to mounting the stairs and joining her. The man who, after
twenty-five years of marriage, can call, by his return to her side, this
expression to the countenance of an intelligent woman is, without
question or argument, an individual whose life and occupations are as
interesting as his character and points of view.

Dr. Warren was of the mental build of the man whose life would be
interesting and full of outlook if it were spent on a desert island or
in the Bastille. He possessed the temperament which annexes incident and
adventure, and the perceptiveness of imagination which turns a light
upon the merest fragment of event. As a man whose days were filled with
the work attendant upon the exercise of a profession from which can be
withheld few secrets, and to which most mysteries explain themselves,
his brain was the recording machine of impressions which might have
stimulated to vividness of imagination a man duller than himself, and
roused to feeling one of far less warm emotions.

He came into the room smiling. He was a man of fifty, of strong build,
and masculine. He had good shoulders and good colour, and the eyes,
nose, and chin of a man it would be a stupid thing to attempt to deal
with in a blackguardly manner. He sat down in his chair by the fire and
began to chat, as was his habit before he and his wife parted to dress
for dinner. When he was out during the day he often looked forward to
these chats, and made notes of things he would like to tell his Mary.
During her day, which