h this brief snatch of intimate talk.

"Ungrateful--yourself! What am I doing but wearing my nose off on the
grindstone--Dr. Melton threatens nervous prostration every day--so's to
show off your pretty trash to the best advantage. _I_ haven't any time
to bother with _you_ now!" she mocked him laughingly, her hands on his
shoulders.

"Well, that sounds like a bargain," he admitted, leaning back in his
chair; "I suppose I've got to be satisfied if you are. _Are_ you
satisfied?" he asked with a sudden seriousness. "How do you like Paul,
now you know him better?"

Lydia flushed, and looked away in a tremulous confusion. "Why, when I'm
with him I can't think of another thing in the world," she confessed in
a low, ardent tone.

"Ah, well, then that's all right," said the Judge comfortably.

There was a pause, during which Lydia looked at the fire dreamily, and
he looked at Lydia. The girl's face grew more and more absent and
brooding.

The door-bell rang. "There he is, I suppose," said her father.

"But isn't it a pity we couldn't make connections?" she asked musingly.
"Maybe I'd have liked you better with your nose on, better even than
pretty trash."

"Eh?" said Judge Emery. His blankness was so acute that he slipped for
an instant back into a rusticity he had long ago left behind him. "What
say, Lydia?" he asked.

"Yes, yes, Paul; I didn't hear you come in," called the girl, jumping up
and beginning to put on her wraps.

The young man darted into the room to help her, saying over his
shoulder: "Much obliged to you, Judge, for your good word to Egdon,
March and Company. I got the contract for the equipment of their new
factory to-day."

The Judge screwed himself round in his chair till he could see Paul
bending at Lydia's feet, putting on her high overshoes. "That's quite a
contract, isn't it?" he asked, highly pleased.

"The biggest I ever got my teeth into," said Paul, straightening up.
"I'm ashamed to have Lydia know anything about it, though. I didn't
bring a hack to take her to the dance."

"Oh, I never thought you would," cried Lydia, standing up and stamping
her feet down in her overshoes--an action that added emphasis to her
protest. "I'd rather walk, it's such a little way. I like it better when
I'm not costing people money."

"You're not like most of your sex," said Paul. "Down in Mexico, when I
was there on the Brighton job, I heard a Spanish proverb: 'If a pretty
woman smiles, some purse is she