d, whence it leered with impish
jocoseness as he thrust his tongue into his cheek.

'Come,' said Barnet gravely, 'we'll have no more of that.'

'No, no--of course not,' Charlson hastily answered, seeing that his
humour had carried him too far, as it had done many times before. He was
profuse in his apologies, but Barnet did not reply. Of one thing he was
certain--that scandal was a plant of quick root, and that he was bound to
obey Lucy's injunction for Lucy's own sake.

CHAPTER III

He did so, to the letter; and though, as the crocus followed the snowdrop
and the daffodil the crocus in Lucy's garden, the harbour-road was a not
unpleasant place to walk in, Barnet's feet never trod its stones, much
less approached her door. He avoided a saunter that way as he would have
avoided a dangerous dram, and took his airings a long distance northward,
among severely square and brown ploughed fields, where no other townsman
came. Sometimes he went round by the lower lanes of the borough, where
the rope-walks stretched in which his family formerly had share, and
looked at the rope-makers walking backwards, overhung by apple-trees and
bushes, and intruded on by cows and calves, as if trade had established
itself there at considerable inconvenience to Nature.

One morning, when the sun was so warm as to raise a steam from the south-
eastern slopes of those flanking hills that looked so lovely above the
old roofs, but made every low-chimneyed house in the town as smoky as
Tophet, Barnet glanced from the windows of the town-council room for lack
of interest in what was proceeding within. Several members of the
corporation were present, but there was not much business doing, and in a
few minutes Downe came leisurely across to him, saying that he seldom saw
Barnet now.

Barnet owned that he was not often present.

Downe looked at the crimson curtain which hung down beside the panes,
reflecting its hot hues into their faces, and then out of the window. At
that moment there passed along the street a tall commanding lady, in whom
the solicitor recognized Barnet's wife. Barnet had done the same thing,
and turned away.

'It will be all right some day,' said Downe, with cheering sympathy.

'You have heard, then, of her last outbreak?'

Downe depressed his cheerfulness to its very reverse in a moment. 'No, I
have not heard of anything serious,' he said, with as long a face as one
naturally round could be turned into at