to
approach Helen and ask her for a polka. Helen punctiliously accepted.
And he led her out. The outraged gods of social decorum were appeased,
and the reputations of Mrs. Prockter and her parties stood as high as
ever. It was well and diplomatically done.

Nevertheless, the unforeseen came to pass. For at the end of the polka
Helen fainted on the grass; and not Andrew but Emanuel was first to
succour her. It was a highly disconcerting climax. Of course, Helen,
being Helen, recovered with singular rapidity. But that did not lighten
the mystery.

In the cab, going home, she wept. James could scarcely have believed it
of her.

"Oh, uncle," she half whispered, in a voice of grief, "you fiddled while
Rome was burning!"

This obscure saying baffled him, the more so that he had been playing a
concertina and not a fiddle at all. His feelings were vague, and in some
respects contradictory; but he was convinced that Mrs. Prockter's scheme
for separating Helen and the Apollo Emanuel was not precisely
succeeding.

CHAPTER XV

THE GIFT

After that night great-stepuncle James became more than a celebrity--he
became a notoriety in Bursley. Had it not been for the personal
influence of Mrs. Prockter with the editor of the _Signal_, James's
exploits upon the concertina under weeping willows at midnight would
have received facetious comment in the weekly column of gossip that
appears in the great daily organ of the Five Towns on Saturdays. James,
aided by nothing but a glass or two of champagne, had suddenly stepped
into the forefront of the town's life. He was a card. He rather liked
being a card.

But within his own heart the triumph and glory of James Ollerenshaw were
less splendid than outside it. Helen, apparently ashamed of having wept
into his waistcoat, kept him off with a kind of a rod of stiff
politeness. He could not get near her, and for at least two reasons he
was anxious to get near her. He wanted to have that frank, confidential
talk with her about the general imbecility of her adorer, Emanuel
Prockter--that talk which he had failed to begin on the morning when
she had been so sympathetic concerning his difficulties in collecting a
large income. Her movements from day to day were mysterious. Facts
pointed to the probability that she and Emanuel were seeing each other
with no undue publicity. And yet, despite facts, despite her behaviour
at the party, he could scarcely believe that shrewd Helen had not