poke again with the same quiet joyousness of
tone.

"You should have telegraphed to me, dearest, and then all would have
been ready to welcome you. As it is, I fear, you must feel yourself a
trifle neglected. I have been, or have fancied myself, mightily busy
all day--foolishly cumbered about much serving--and had gone out to
forget maids, and food, and domesticities generally, into the dear
garden."--She paused, smiling. "Ah! it is a gracious night," she said,
"full of inspiration. You must have enjoyed the drive home. The
household refuses to take this marriage of yours philosophically,
Dickie. It demands great magnificence, quite as much, be sure, for its
own glorification as for yours. It also multiplies small difficulties,
after the manner of well-conducted households, as I imagine, since the
world began."

Richard tore the prospectus of a mining company, offering wealth beyond
the dreams of avarice, right across with a certain violence.

"Oh, well, the household may forego its magnificence and cease from the
multiplication of small difficulties alike, as far as any marriage of
mine is concerned. You can tell the household so to-morrow, mother, or
I can. Perhaps the irony of the position would be more nicely pointed
by the announcement coming directly from myself. That would heighten
the drama."

"But, Dickie, my dearest?" Katherine said, greatly perplexed.

"The whole affair is at an end. Lady Constance Quayle is not going to
marry me, and I am not going to marry Lady Constance Quayle. On that
point at least she and I are entirely at one. All London will know this
to-morrow. Perhaps Brockhurst, in the interest of its endangered
philosophy, had better know it to-night."

Richard leaned forward, opening, tearing, sorting the papers again. A
rasping quality was in his voice and speech, hitherto unknown to his
mother, a cold, imperious quality in his manner, also, new to her. And
these brought her down to earth, setting her feet thereon
uncompromisingly. And the earth on which they were thus set was, it
must be owned, rather ugly. A woman made of weaker stuff would have
cried out against such sudden and painful declension. But Katherine,
happily both for herself and for those about her, waking even from
dreams of noble and far-reaching attainment, waked with not only her
wits, but her heart, in steady action. Yet she in nowise went back on
the revelation that had been vouchsafed to her. It was in nowise
disqua