taste of the
wine must long have gone from her mouth, and was stammering miserably,
"Well, if yon stuff's a temptation to any poor folk--!" Again he felt
that their relationship was on a proper footing; he moved towards her,
walking masterfully. Oh, it was going to be ecstasy.... There was a loud
knocking at the outer door.

III

She forgot all about the wine at once, he was so very big. And he looked
as though he had gold rings in his ears, although he hadn't; it was just
part of his sea-going air.

He looked at her very hard and said as though it hardly mattered, "I
want to see Mr. James. My name's Yaverland."

"Will you step inside?" said Ellen, with her best English accent. "Mr.
Philip's expecting you." She was glad he had come, for he looked
interesting, but she hoped he would not interrupt her warm comfortable
occupation of mothering Mr. Philip. To keep that mood aglow in herself
she stopped as they went along the passage and begged, "You'll not make
him miss his train? He's away to London to-night. He should leave here
on the very clap of eight."

The stranger seemed, after a moment's silence, of which, since they
stood in darkness, she could not read the cause, to lay aside a
customary indifference for the sake of the gravity of the occasion. "Oh,
certainly; he shall leave on the very clap of eight," he replied
earnestly.

He spoke without an accent and was most romantically dark. Ellen
wondered whether Mr. Philip would like him--she had noticed that Mr.
Philip didn't seem to fancy people who were very tall. And she perceived
with consternation as they entered the room that he had suddenly been
overtaken by one of his moods. He had taken up the tray and was trying
to slip it into the cupboard, which he might have seen would never hold
it, and in any case was a queer place for a tray, and stood there with
it in his hands, brick-red and glowering at them. She was going to take
it from him when he dunted it down on the window-seat with a clatter.
"What for can he not go on with his good chop?" thought Ellen. "We're
putting on grand company manners for this bit chemist body, surely," and
she pulled forward a chair for the stranger and sat down in the corner
with her note-book on her knee.

"You're Mr. Yaverland?" said Mr. Philip, shooting his chin forward and
squaring his shoulders, and looking as though his father were dead and
he were the head of the firm.

"I'm Richard Yaverland. Mr. Frank Gibson sai