mournful end,
and the two went into the drawing room to wait for Rivers' arrival.

Hilda took up a handkerchief she was embroidering for Judy, and took
special pleasure in putting in new and exquisite stitches as her
thoughts centered themselves in dull wonder and pain round the child.
Quentyns became absorbed in the contents of a novel. He read for half an
hour--he was by no means in a good humor, and now and then his eyes were
raised to look over the top of the book at his wife. There was a patient
sort of suffering about her which irritated him a good bit, as he could
see no possible reason to account for it. He asked her one or two
questions, which she answered in an abstracted manner.

No, he certainly had not bargained for this sort of thing when he
married. Hilda was not only pretty, but she could be, when she liked,
sufficiently intellectual to satisfy his requirements. He was fastidious
and had peculiar views with regard to women. He hated the so-called
clever women, but at the same time he despised the stupid ones. To
please him a woman must have tact--she must quickly understand his many
moods. She must sympathize when he demanded sympathy, and when he showed
by his manner that he wished to be left alone, she must respect his
desires. Hitherto, Hilda had abundantly fulfilled his expectations. If
Judy had not been in the house, all that he had ever dreamed of in his
married life would have come to pass. But to-night, although Judy was
not there to intermeddle, Quentyns felt that, for all the good his wife
was doing him, he might as well be a bachelor at his club.

"My dear," he said with some impatience, and forgetting himself not a
little, "do you know that you have made precisely the same remark now
five times? I did not quarrel with its brilliancy the first time I heard
it, but on the fifth occasion I will own that it gave me a certain sense
of _ennui_. As I see that your thoughts are miles away, I'll just run
round to the club for a bit and find out if there is anything going on."

Hilda raised her eyes in some surprise. A certain expression in them
seemed to expostulate with Jasper, but her lips said nothing; and just
at that moment a hansom was heard to bowl up rapidly and stop with a
quick jerk at the door. A moment later Rivers entered the drawing room.
He came up at once to Hilda with the air of a man who has a message to
deliver.

"Judy hopes you got her note long ere this, Mrs. Quentyns."

"H