case he should disturb you, but I should not
feel it right to make home dull and cheerless by forbidding any noise
whatever."

"It does not occur to you that under those circumstances you are hardly
the right tenants for a flat, but ought to be in a house of your own?"

"It occurs to me that we are the best judges of our own actions,"
returned Philippa icily, fighting down the wild longing that arose, even
as she spoke, for a place of their own--a nest, however small, where
they might dwell in peace and freedom. "You are not the only tenant, Mr
Neil, who has to endure disagreeables from his neighbours; we also might
find ground for complaint, if we wished to be disagreeable. My sisters
sleep above your study, and they say you keep poking the fire until two
in the morning and waking them up with a start. Then, too, you have a
hanging lamp or chandelier which you push up, and which makes a most
unpleasant noise; and in the autumn evenings you smoked strong cigars on
your balcony until we were poisoned with the smell. Oh, there are a
thousand things which I could mention," cried Philippa--though in truth
she would have been puzzled to add one more complaint to her list--"but
I would not stoop to it! It is too miserably petty and degrading to be
everlastingly picking quarrels. I am sick of it."

"Not more heartily than I am. I have lived in these buildings for
nearly ten years and have only once before made a complaint--which, I
may remark, was met in a very different spirit." The Hermit was
evidently growing ruffled in his turn, and could not resist a parting
shot before he left the room. "As I said before, I should be sorry to
have to complain at headquarters, but I do not intend to have my comfort
ruined by new-comers who have no claim on the establishment. If it
becomes impossible for us both to live under one roof, I have little
doubt who would be asked to remain."

He was gone. The door closed behind him, and Philippa sank into a chair
with a sudden feeling of collapse. "Oh! oh!" she cried, and her hands
went up to her head, and her breath grew short and strangled. All her
pride and independence were swept aside by the remembrance of those last
pregnant words: "Impossible for us both--little doubt in whose favour!"
Suppose--oh, suppose, the Hermit complained to the committee, and she
were served with a notice to quit! Suppose, with one set of bills
barely settled, she were called upon to incur a seco