playing. The moment he struck the
last chord, she called to him in a clear, soft, cold voice:

"Will you tell Mr. Redmain your name? I happen to have forgotten it."

Tom picked up his hat, rose, came forward, and, mentioning his name,
held out his hand.

"I don't know you," said Mr. Redmain, touching his palm with two
fingers that felt like small fishes.

"It is of no consequence," said his wife; "Mr. Aylmer is an old
acquaintance of our family."

"Only you don't quite remember his name!"

"It is not my _friends'_ names only I have an unhappy trick of
forgetting. I often forget yours, Mr. Redmain!"

"My _good_ name, you must mean."

"I never heard that."

Neither had raised the voice, or spoken with the least apparent anger.

Mr. Redmain gave a grin instead of a retort. He appreciated her
sharpness too much to get one ready in time. Turning away, he left the
room with a quiet, steady step, taking his grin with him: it had drawn
the clear, scanty skin yet tighter on his face, and remained fixed; so
that he vanished with something of the look of a hairless tiger.

The moment he disappeared, Tom's gaze, which had been fascinated,
sought Hesper. Her lips were shaping the word _brute!_--Tom heard it
with his eyes; her eyes were flashing, and her face was flushed. But
the same instant, in a voice perfectly calm--

"Is there anything else you would like to sing, Mr. Helmer?" she said.
"Or--" Here she ceased, with the slightest possible choking--it was
only of anger--in the throat.

Tom's was a sympathetic nature, especially where a pretty woman was in
question. He forgot entirely that she had given quite as good, or as
bad, as she received, and was hastening to say something foolish,
imagining he had looked upon the sorrows of a lovely and unhappy wife
and was almost in her confidence, when Sepia entered the room, with a
dark glow that flashed into dusky radiance at sight of the handsome
Tom. She had noted him on the night of the party, and remembered having
seen him at the merrymaking in the old hall of Durnmelling, but he had
not been introduced to her. A minute more, and they were sitting
together in a bay-window, blazing away at each other like two
corvettes, though their cartridges were often blank enough, while
Hesper, never heeding them, kept her place by the chimney, her gaze
transferred from the fire to the novel she had sent for from her
bedroom.

CHAPTER XXV.

MARY'S RECEPTION.

In the