baseness. At
eight o'clock he ventured to knock at Ella's door and explain to her
that Sidney had not been quite well. She had passed a peaceful night,
for he had, of course, refrained from disturbing her.

He was not quite sure whether Sidney had meant him to stay at the hydro
as his guest, so he demanded a bill, paid it, said good-bye, and left
for Bonn-on-the-Rhine. He was very exhausted and sleepy. Happily the
third-class carriages on the London & North-Western are pretty
comfortable. Between Chester and Crewe he had quite a doze, and dreamed
that he had married Ella after all, and that her twenty thousand pounds
had put the earthenware business on a footing of magnificent and
splendid security.

V

A few months later Horace's house and garden at Toft End were put up to
auction by arrangement with his mortgagee and his trade-creditors. And
Sidney was struck with the idea of buying the place. The impression was
that it would go cheap. Sidney said it would be a pity to let the abode
pass out of the family. Ella said that the idea of buying it was a
charming one, because in the garden it was that she had first met her
Sidney. So the place was duly bought, and Sidney and Ella went to live
there.

Several years elapsed.

Then one day little Horace was informed that his uncle Horace, whom he
had never seen, was coming to the house on a visit, and that he must be
a good boy, and polite to his uncle, and all the usual sort of thing.

And in effect Horace the elder did arrive in the afternoon. He found no
one to meet him at the station, or at the garden gate of the pleasaunce
that had once been his, or even at the front door. A pert parlour-maid
told him that her master and mistress were upstairs in the nursery, and
that he was requested to go up. And he went up, and to be sure Sidney
met him at the top of the stairs, banjo in hand, cigarette in mouth,
smiling, easy and elegant as usual--not a trace of physical weakness in
his face or form. And Horace was jocularly ushered into the nursery and
introduced to his nephew. Ella had changed. She was no longer slim, and
no longer gay and serious by turns. She narrowly missed being stout,
and she was continuously gay, like Sidney. The child was also gay.
Everybody was glad to see Horace, but nobody seemed deeply interested
in Horace's affairs. As a fact he had done rather well in Germany, and
had now come back to England in order to assume a working partnership
in