ir ordinary number of
dinners to guests per annum. In fact, before Van Diemen came, the
house on the beach looked on Crikswich without a rival to challenge its
anticipated lordship over the place, and for some inexplicable reason
it seemed to its inhabitants to have been a safer as well as a happier
residence.

They were consoled by Tinman's performance of a clever stroke in
privately purchasing the cottages west of the town, and including
Crickledon's shop, abutting on Marine Parade. Then from the house on the
beach they looked at an entire frontage of their property.

They entered the month of February. No further time was to be lost,
"or we shall wake up to find that man has fooled us," Mrs. Cavely said.
Tinman appeared at Elba to demand a private interview with Annette. His
hat was blown into the hall as the door opened to him, and he himself
was glad to be sheltered by the door, so violent was the gale. Annette
and her father were sitting together. They kept the betrothed gentleman
waiting a very long time. At last Van Diemen went to him, and said,
"Netty 'll see you, if you must. I suppose you have no business with
me?"

"Not to-day," Tinman replied.

Van Diemen strode round the drawing-room with his hands in his pockets.
"There's a disparity of ages," he said, abruptly, as if desirous to pour
out his lesson while he remembered it. "A man upwards of forty marries
a girl under twenty, he's over sixty before she's forty; he's decaying
when she's only mellow. I ought never to have struck you, I know. And
you're such an infernal bad temper at times, and age does n't improve
that, they say; and she's been educated tip-top. She's sharp on grammar,
and a man may n't like that much when he's a husband. See her, if you
must. But she does n't take to the idea; there's the truth. Disparity
of ages and unsuitableness of dispositions--what was it Fellingham
said?--like two barrel-organs grinding different tunes all day in a
house."

"I don't want to hear Mr. Fellingham's comparisons," Tinman snapped.

"Oh! he's nothing to the girl," said Van Diemen. "She doesn't stomach
leaving me."

"My dear Philip! why should she leave you? When we have interests in
common as one household--"

"She says you're such a damned bad temper."

Tinman was pursuing amicably, "When we are united--" But the frightful
charge brought against his temper drew him up. "Fiery I may be. Annette
has seen I am forgiving. I am a Christian. You have