u frequent;
you can't be entertained without entertaining in return. Now if his wife
had brought him only a couple of thousand pounds all might have been
well. I should have advised him, in sober seriousness, to live for two
years at the rate of a thousand a year. At the end of that time he would
have been earning enough to continue at pretty much the same rate of
expenditure.'

'Perhaps.'

'Well, I ought rather to say that the average man of letters would be
able to do that. As for Reardon--'

He stopped. The name had escaped him unawares.

'Reardon?' said Marian, looking up. 'You are speaking of him?'

'I have betrayed myself Miss Yule.'

'But what does it matter? You have only spoken in his favour.'

'I feared the name might affect you disagreeably.'

Marian delayed her reply.

'It is true,' she said, 'we are not on friendly terms with my cousin's
family. I have never met Mr Reardon. But I shouldn't like you to think
that the mention of his name is disagreeable to me.'

'It made me slightly uncomfortable yesterday--the fact that I am well
acquainted with Mrs Edmund Yule, and that Reardon is my friend. Yet
I didn't see why that should prevent my making your father's
acquaintance.'

'Surely not. I shall say nothing about it; I mean, as you uttered the
name unintentionally.'

There was a pause in the dialogue. They had been speaking almost
confidentially, and Marian seemed to become suddenly aware of an oddness
in the situation. She turned towards the uphill path, as if thinking of
resuming her walk.

'You are tired of standing still,' said Jasper. 'May I walk back a part
of the way with you?'

'Thank you; I shall be glad.'

They went on for a few minutes in silence.

'Have you published anything with your signature, Miss Yule?' Jasper at
length inquired.

'Nothing. I only help father a little.'

The silence that again followed was broken this time by Marian.

'When you chanced to mention Mr Reardon's name,' she said, with a
diffident smile in which lay that suggestion of humour so delightful
upon a woman's face, 'you were going to say something more about him?'

'Only that--' he broke off and laughed. 'Now, how boyish it was, wasn't
it? I remember doing just the same thing once when I came home
from school and had an exciting story to tell, with preservation of
anonymities. Of course I blurted out a name in the first minute or two,
to my father's great amusement. He told me that I hadn't the