ating--the business was too serious, and Manton was there. But while
her husband smoked over his coffee, serene and charming, she sat alone
with him, revelling in his wit and gaiety, telling herself that he was
indeed the splendid fellow she had always thought him.

Then they went up to the big drawing-room--he was used to big
rooms--and he flung himself at full length upon one of the downy
couches, and she put silk pillows under his head.

While she was doing it, he pulled her down to him and kissed her.

"It's nice, isn't it?" he murmured in her ear.

For answer, she pressed her lips to his ivory brows and his dropped
eyelids. Her big heart was too full for speech.

"Now I am going to play to you," she whispered, and went off to the old
piano, that the tuner had prepared for this sacred purpose.

What years it was since she had cared to touch piano keys! And never
since the love-time of her youth had she played as she did now--all the
old things that he had ever cared for, with the old passion in them....

And while she played--he slumbered peacefully.

* * * * *

Jim, when his day of hard work was over, went back to his manager's
house--all the home he knew--had a bath, put on clean clothes, ate
perfunctorily of roast mutton, and bread and jam, and sat down with his
pipe on the top step of his verandah, where he hugged his knees and
watched the stars come out. He was a confirmed old bachelor now, "set",
his sisters said, in his bachelor ways. None of them lived with him, to
keep his house and cheer him up. It was too dull for them (with the
mistress of Redford never there), and besides, he did not want
cheering; for himself, he preferred dullness. An old working
housekeeper "did" for him, cooking his simple meals--eggs and bacon
alternating with chops for breakfast, and mutton and bread and jam for
his tea-dinner, with a fowl for Sundays--keeping his few plain rooms
clean and his socks mended. A hundred or two a year must have covered
his household expenses; the hundreds remaining of his handsome income
went to shore up the weak-kneed of his kindred, who had the habit of
falling back on him when their funds ran out, or anything else went
wrong with them.

He was a great reader. Books lined the walls of his otherwise meagrely
furnished rooms--they represented the one personal extravagance that he
indulged in--and newspapers and magazines came by every mail. In these
and in his thoughts he lived, when no