to Fermor ceremoniously; and they all drank to
him.

"Seems more like an outbreak," said Mr. Romaine.

Fermor was pleased at this company, though
he recollected Romaine at once. Miss Manuel
had a way of making it felt among her subjects
that she wished a protégé to be respected, and
Romaine, though he did not relish Fermor, and
would have liked, as he had said before, "to
break him like a stick upon his knee," yet still
was trained to affect a sort of respect towards
him. Even "Webster," ready to crunch him, as
he was crunching the wing of a snipe, bones
and all, and having a snarl ready, forbore, and
was gracious.

Fermor was flattered by this universal homage.
In the rest, towards each other, there
was a republican familiarity which almost made
him shiver. About "Webster" especially there
was a good-humoured bitterness and shortness—
long silences, during which he was busy with his
snipe; and when he was casting about for more,
coming out with something short and smart.
Every now and again he squeezed an intellectual
lemon.

"I shall help myself, Miss Manuel," he said,
stretching over to the champagne. "The new
Miss Jenkinson, who has just come out! Look!"

They laughed at this simile.

"The neck," he said, looking at it sideways,
"so reminds me. Only her mother has taken the
tinfoil, and the wires, and the cord, and made
them into a mob-cap! Ha! ha!"

"For shame!" said Miss Manuel; "a poor girl
just come out. She takes well."

"Not so well as this dear girl," he said, patting
the flask. "Her mother may send her back
to the family bin in the country."

Fermor listened amused, and said something
in his old manner, which was welcomed with
general cordiality. He was not altogether an
outlaw, he felt. This was something like the old
life. He kept up a kind of confidential talk
with Miss Manuel. Under that soft light she
seemed to glow, and glitter, and flash, like a
precious stone.

"I ought to be at home," he said, in the old
half-injured tone he was so fond of. "It is my
proper place. I have been told so, at least. I
am more fitted to adorn humdrum life than this
sort of scene."

"Ah! you are thinking of the way I behaved
to-night, I know you are," she said, looking
down. "I am so strange, and behave so
strangely. I have Spanish blood in me, and I
must curb myself in everything I like—even
mortify myself—or else I don't know where I
should end!"

With a sort of glimpse of the meaning of this
mysterious language, Fermor waited to hear
more.

"You don't know me," she said, hurriedly.
"I am one of those natures that must rule
myself, or be ruled by myself. Sometimes I dare
not trust myself. Is it not better, then," she
added, half piteously, "to run the risk of seeming
rough, and brusque, and blunt—and, in fact, what
you are not, than—?" She paused.

"Than what?" said Fermor, almost tremulously
interested, for now he was seeing quite distinctly.

Romaine was looking on from across the table
—perhaps listening. Fermor saw the
contemptuous glance on his lip, and was pleased.
Of course he was not pleased at the preference,
and this put Fermor into great good humour.

Soon Miss Manuel fell again into the same
tone. "Do you like this sort of thing?" she
said, in a half melancholy tone. "I shall not
have them again—I shall give them up."

"Why do that?" said Fermor, in gentle
remonstrance.

"Why have them?" said she, looking at
him.

Fermor smiled.

"You are smiling," she said, "because you
know me, and how little able I am to keep to a
resolution. You know I went out to-night with
a firm resolve not to ask you here. I bound myself
up, almost by a vow, and yet here you are,
sitting next to me."

Again Fermor smiled. The old armoury was
still bright, the sword still sharp. "What have
I done?" he said, in a low voice. "I know I have
many faults; but still—"

"More," she went on, "I want you to promise
me one thing, that you will be generous—"

"Generous!" repeated Fermor.

"Yes, generous," she said. "You have conquered
me to-night. Let me have some little
victories in future. I want to train myself, and
shall do so. Why not let me? You have everything
at home, why not be content? No, we shall
have no more little suppers. I want to live in
the world as I have hitherto done—without
heart, or softness, or esteem, or regard—in what
is called the hollow world. You understand me.
Do, I conjure you, let me, and rub Alfred-place
out of the map of London."

Some one struck in at this point, and with a
sentence came between Fermor and Miss Manuel.
When she returned to him, she said, "Do you
know who was to have been here to-night, or at
least I asked him? Poor John Hanbury."

Fermor started and coloured. "He has
come back," she said; "he has been doing the
savage travelling, Gabooning it, and that kind of
thing. He never cared for it really; but I
suspect, poor fellow," she added, in a low voice,
"he had another object besides gorilla skins.
He wanted to get rid of his old self. You see,"
she added, slowly, "he was very sensitive, and
allowed things to take hold of his mind, which
another more sensible would have fought off.
And the worst is, he is come back just the same
as when he went out, after all the Gabooning."

Fermor did not lift his eyes. Was this a
reproach of hers, or merely accidental?

"Poor soul!" she went on "(poor fool!