onfronted by the hieroglyphic. He could not have expressed
his emotion, but he wondered whether he would ever find the key, and
something told him that before she could speak to him his own lips must
be unclosed. She had gone into the house by the back kitchen door,
leaving it open, and he heard her speaking to the girl about the water
being 'really boiling.' He was amazed, almost indignant with himself;
but the sound of the words came to his ears as strange, heart-piercing
music, tones from another, wonderful sphere. And yet he was her husband,
and they had been married nearly a year; and yet, whenever she spoke, he
had to listen to the sense of what she said, constraining himself, lest
he should believe she was a magic creature, knowing the secrets of
immeasurable delight.

He looked out through the leaves of the mulberry tree. Mr. Sayce had
disappeared from his view, but he saw the light-blue fume of the cigar
that he was smoking floating slowly across the shadowed air. He was
wondering at his wife's manner when Sayce's name was mentioned, puzzling
his head as to what could be amiss in the household of a most
respectable personage, when his wife appeared at the dining-room window
and called him in to tea. She smiled as he looked up, and he rose
hastily and walked in, wondering whether he were not a little 'queer,'
so strange were the dim emotions and the dimmer impulses that rose
within him.

Alice was all shining purple and strong scent, as she brought in the
teapot and the jug of hot water. It seemed that a visit to the kitchen
had inspired Mrs. Darnell in her turn with a novel plan for disposing of
the famous ten pounds. The range had always been a trouble to her, and
when sometimes she went into the kitchen, and found, as she said, the
fire 'roaring halfway up the chimney,' it was in vain that she reproved
the maid on the ground of extravagance and waste of coal. Alice was
ready to admit the absurdity of making up such an enormous fire merely
to bake (they called it 'roast') a bit of beef or mutton, and to boil
the potatoes and the cabbage; but she was able to show Mrs. Darnell that
the fault lay in the defective contrivance of the range, in an oven
which 'would not get hot.' Even with a chop or a steak it was almost as
bad; the heat seemed to escape up the chimney or into the room, and Mary
had spoken several times to her husband on the shocking waste of coal,
and the cheapest coal procurable was never less tha