illiard-room.'

Mary considered gravely, always with the dream in her eyes. 'I don't
think we could manage it, Edward,' she said; 'it would be inconvenient
in many ways.' She hesitated for a moment. 'And I don't think I should
care to have a young man in the house. It is so very small, and our
accommodation, as you know, is so limited.'

She blushed slightly, and Edward, a little disappointed as he was,
looked at her with a singular longing, as if he were a scholar
confronted with a doubtful hieroglyph, either wholly wonderful or
altogether commonplace. Next door children were playing in the garden,
playing shrilly, laughing, crying, quarrelling, racing to and fro.
Suddenly a clear, pleasant voice sounded from an upper window.

'Enid! Charles! Come up to my room at once!'

There was an instant sudden hush. The children's voices died away.

'Mrs. Parker is supposed to keep her children in great order,' said
Mary. 'Alice was telling me about it the other day. She had been talking
to Mrs. Parker's servant. I listened to her without any remark, as I
don't think it right to encourage servants' gossip; they always
exaggerate everything. And I dare say children often require to be
corrected.'

The children were struck silent as if some ghastly terror had seized
them.

Darnell fancied that he heard a queer sort of cry from the house, but
could not be quite sure. He turned to the other side, where an elderly,
ordinary man with a grey moustache was strolling up and down on the
further side of his garden. He caught Darnell's eye, and Mrs. Darnell
looking towards him at the same moment, he very politely raised his
tweed cap. Darnell was surprised to see his wife blushing fiercely.

'Sayce and I often go into the City by the same 'bus,' he said, 'and as
it happens we've sat next to each other two or three times lately. I
believe he's a traveller for a leather firm in Bermondsey. He struck me
as a pleasant man. Haven't they got rather a good-looking servant?'

'Alice has spoken to me about her--and the Sayces,' said Mrs. Darnell.
'I understand that they are not very well thought of in the
neighbourhood. But I must go in and see whether the tea is ready. Alice
will be wanting to go out directly.'

Darnell looked after his wife as she walked quickly away. He only dimly
understood, but he could see the charm of her figure, the delight of the
brown curls clustering about her neck, and he again felt that sense of
the scholar c