t because I 'appen
to mention owd Dickey Bulmer," he growled.

The color startled so suddenly out of the girl's face began to return.
Her eyes lost their dilation of fear. Somehow, the comment on the
broken glass seemed to deprive "owd Dickey Bulmer's" personality of its
real menace.

"I'm sorry," she said, and stooped to pick up the fragments scattered
over the carpet.

"Leave that alone," came the sharp order. "So long as I've the brass
to pay for 'em, there's plenty more where that kem from, an' in any
case, it's the 'ousemaid's job. Leave it alone, I tell you! An' sit
down. It's 'igh time you an' me 'ad a straight talk, an' I can't do
wi' folk bouncin' about like an injia-rubber ball when I've got things
to say to 'em."

He stretched a fat hand toward a mahogany cigar-box, affected to choose
a cigar with deliberative crackling, hacked at the selection with a
fruit knife, and dropped the severed end into an unused finger-bowl;
then he struck a match, and puffed furiously until a rim of white ash
tipped the brown. This achieved, he helped himself to the port.
Though he carefully avoided glancing at his companion, he knew quite
well that she had drawn a chair to the opposite end of the table, and
was looking at him intently; her chin was propped on her clenched
hands; the skin on her white forehead was puckered into nervous lines;
her lips, pressed close, had lost their Cupid's bow that seemed ever
ready to bend into a smile. Meanwhile, the man who had caused these
signs of distress gulped down some of the wine, held the glass up to
the light as a tribute to the excellence of its contents, darted his
tongue several times in and out between his teeth, smacked his lips,
replaced the cigar in his mouth, and leaned back in his chair until it
creaked.

Iris Yorke was accustomed to this ritual; she gave it the unobservant
tolerance good breeding extends to the commonplace. But to-day, for
the first time during the two years that had sped so happily since she
came back to Linden House from a Brussels _pension_, she found herself,
even in her present trouble, wondering how it was possible that David
Verity could be her mother's brother. This coarse-mannered hog of a
man, brother to the sweet-voiced, tender-hearted gentlewoman whose
gracious wraith was left undimmed in the girl's memory by the lapse of
years--it would be unbelievable if it were not true! He was so gross,
so tubby, so manifestly over-fed, wherea