ous fruits and red juice dripping down his tunic.

"I--I--" began Miss Bibby.

But Hugh calmly tucked her hand in his arm and led her to the children's
table. "I am taking you into dinner, madam, and I insist that you eat
everything I put before you."

And she did--or almost. Hugh let the children revel as they liked in the
good things, and assured their anxious guardian that he had chosen the
lunch expressly from the point of view of suitability for the delicate
digestions of children. And he laid down the maxim that appetite was the
safest guide in the world, and when it said "More" no one but a Bumble
would say it nay.

He ate excellently himself; he uncorked the champagne, and insisted upon
her joining him with it; the sparkling stuff filled all her veins with
fire. She ate chicken and found that it was good--and very good. She ate
of other delicacies with which he plied her plates and found all her
system rejoiced. In very truth she had lately pushed her diet theory so
far that she was in a state of semi-starvation. She laughed, she chatted
gaily, she made as entertaining a companion for that little lunch at the
foot of the Fall as a man need wish to have. Hugh stared at her in amaze
once or twice; it was as if a white tightly-closed rosebud had suddenly
blossomed into beautiful bloom.

"Happiness," said Hugh to himself, "that is all she needs, and the
independence and responsibilities of a home of her own."

The merry lunch progressed; the talk fell upon the author's own
books--and other books. Again Hugh was surprised--and delighted--at the
lady's discrimination and genuine culture. It was difficult to realize
that any one who wrote so atrociously could think and speak so well.

"It's like Kate's bicycle," he said to himself, "a single woman must
break out somewhere. The probabilities are, if she had a home of her
own, that she would never want to touch a pen again."

Round and round the subject hovered his thoughts; this gentle, quiet
companion for the autumn of his life--the thought was singularly
attractive--infinitely more so than the thought of Dora or Bee that had
always possessed also an element of distraction alarming to a man of
staid habits.

He looked at her with new eyes.

She saw the look and drooped and flushed beneath it.

Then down came Kate, panting and puffing, but quite genial.

"A nice way to treat your guests, Sir," she said, "do you know you have
been away an hour? I don't know