or her son. But
the truth I take to be this, that protecting angels for widows' sons,
at forty-eight pounds a year, paid quarterly, are not to be found
very readily in London. Mrs Roper was not worse than others of her
class. She would much have preferred lodgers who were respectable
to those who were not so,--if she could only have found respectable
lodgers as she wanted them. Mr and Mrs Lupex hardly came under that
denomination; and when she gave them up her big front bedroom at a
hundred a year, she knew she was doing wrong. And she was troubled,
too, about her own daughter Amelia, who was already over thirty years
of age. Amelia was a very clever young woman, who had been, if the
truth must be told, first young lady at a millinery establishment in
Manchester. Mrs Roper knew that Mrs Eames and Mrs Cradell would not
wish their sons to associate with her daughter. But what could she
do? She could not refuse the shelter of her own house to her own
child, and yet her heart misgave her when she saw Amelia flirting
with young Eames.

"I wish, Amelia, you wouldn't have so much to say to that young man."

"Laws, mother."

"So I do. If you go on like that, you'll put me out of both my
lodgers."

"Go on like what, mother? If a gentleman speaks to me, I suppose I'm
to answer him? I know how to behave myself, I believe." And then she
gave her head a toss. Whereupon her mother was silent; for her mother
was afraid of her.

CHAPTER V

About L. D.

Apollo Crosbie left London for Allington on the 31st of August,
intending to stay there four weeks, with the declared intention of
recruiting his strength by an absence of two months from official
cares, and with no fixed purpose as to his destiny for the last of
those two months. Offers of hospitality had been made to him by the
dozen. Lady Hartletop's doors, in Shropshire, were open to him, if he
chose to enter them. He had been invited by the Countess de Courcy
to join her suite at Courcy Castle. His special friend, Montgomerie
Dobbs, had a place in Scotland, and then there was a yachting party
by which he was much wanted. But Mr Crosbie had as yet knocked
himself down to none of these biddings, having before him when he
left London no other fixed engagement than that which took him to
Allington. On the first of October we shall also find ourselves at
Allington in company with Johnny Eames; and Apollo Crosbie will
still be there,--by no means to the comfort of our f