"Yes, do go; you can call to-morrow, you
know, about the ottoman."

"The ottoman?" Adolphus laughed satirically.
"Oh! woman in thine hour of ease——"

"There, pray be calm, my dear sir," cried
Mrs. Chutney, now convinced of his insanity,
and greatly alarmed. "But oh," she continued,
in despair, "that is his ring! And if he sees
you, I would hardly answer for your life, or
mine either."

"Put me somewhere—anywhere! Dispose of
me as you will," said Deal, with an uncomfortable
recollection of the stout frame and irate
temperament of the coming veteran; and he
turned hastily to the library door.

"No, no," whispered Mrs. Chutney, eagerly,
"not there. Go into the garden. John," she
continued to the page, "show Mr. Deal into the
garden. Then, after your master is safe in,
take him the key of the lower gate. Make
haste—oh! do make haste."

In the midst of his dread and timidity Adolphus
dropped his hat, and made an ineffectual
effort to recover it. "Do not delay, Mr. Deal—
pray do not," implored Mrs. Chutney; and the
next moment the French window leading to the
garden closed upon the hatless upholsterer.

A second furious ring at the bell, and Mrs.
Chutney retreating hastily towards her fauteuil,
tripped over the lost head-gear, picked it up,
and dropped it into an obscure corner between
the window and the piano, where the ample
curtains effectually concealed it.

Colonel Chutney entered, seething with wrath.
He wiped his brow and took a turn up and
down the room, unable to find words
sufficiently expressive of his indignation, while
Mrs. Chutney sat trembling. In this
condition violent-tempered people consider they
are calm, turbulently insisting that they are
so. When the words came that the colonel had
been vainly seeking for, he spoke them slowly and
solemnly: "Look here, Mrs. Chutney, I have
been kept five minutes at that infernal door with
the sun blazing full upon me! How can a man
stand these repeated insults? Insults I call
them, by Jove! when a man's wishes are
disregarded, and—and——"

"Well, never mind, dear," said Mrs. Chutney,
in a soothing tone, and nerving herself with the
hope that her difficulties were nearly over. "Go
up and wash your hands. There is such a nice
curry for dinner."

"That is all very well," replied the husband,
suspiciously, "but I would lay two to one you
have forgotten the cocoa-nut!"

"You have lost, then," cried his wife, attempting
a playful tone. "Come"—trying to snatch
a kiss—"I consider you owe me a pair of
gloves."

The colonel, a good deal surprised, submitted
awkwardly, and, slightly mollified, continued his
quarter-deck walk over the carpet. "Now,
Louisa," he began, "what have you done with
Mary to-day?"

"Nothing, dear. I could make nothing of
her. Not a single syllable of explanation could
I extract from her. So I begged Aunt Barbara
to bring her over to dinner."

"You have? Then you have done very
wrong. I have asked Peake; and as I do not
wish him to be dragged into the same miserable
position I have been, I should prefer——" here
he stopped short and stared fixedly at the
windows. "I say," observed the colonel,
intensely, "look at those blinds; one of them
is a foot higher than the other. How any
right-minded person with an eye in head can endure
such a dreadful obliquity, is more than I can
fathom." He began to untwist the cord, when
he again made a sudden pause and looked out
intently into the garden. "Who is that lunatic
walking about without his hat?" he asked, at
last. "Gad, it's Deal, the upholsterer. What
the deuce is Deal doing there?"

"It is all over," thought the wretched
Louisa, her heart sinking within her.

"John," shouted Colonel Chutney to the
page, "come here"—pointing to the garden.
"Who is that maniac?" John appeared like
magic, troubled with a bad cough, and looked
to his mistress for directions. She shook her
head despairingly. John's cough got worse.

"Stop that confounded hacking!" cried the
colonel, sternly, "and come here. Look! Tell
me, who is that in the garden?"

"Please, sir," returned the page, with an air
of unhesitating certainty, "that, sir? that's
Miss Jemimar Ann, as lives at Number Twenty
—her young man. I see him often of a evening
walking under her balcony, and he never do wear
his 'at."

"Do you mean to tell me you do not recognise
him as that ridiculous idiot, Deal, the
upholsterer?"

"Well, sir," looking out carefully, and with
a tone of great candour, "now I look closer, it
is Mr. Deal."

"There is some infernal mischief here," cried
the colonel, a dark suspicion rushing to his brain.
"Why was I kept so long at the door? Why—
why—Mrs. Chutney?"

"My dear Felix, believe me——"

"I will believe nothing! Go, John, go this
moment, and bring me that wretched imbecile.
I will get to the bottom of this, and if I find you
have been compromising me with expensive
orders, I will post a warning against you in all
the public papers to-morrow."

The colonel paused for want of breath, the
page rushed away to execute his wishes, and
poor Mrs. Chutney, roused to indignation at
last, stood silently watching the scene, unutterably
humiliated at being placed in such a position
for so insufficient a cause. The colonel
threw open the window, and, regardless of public
opinion, shouted out his directions and orders in
stentorian tones.

Meanwhile, the wretched Adolphus, finding
the garden gate locked, had lingered about in
search of succour, and his hat. On first seeing
John flying with the most ostentatious speed,
he imagined he was coming to his aid, and
hastened to meet him, till warned by an injunction