This was not a very gracious permission, but Miss Topham wiped her eyes and held out her hand; at the moment, by most provoking bad luck, the Rector and his daughter dashed by in a dog-cart, and the former, recognising him, called back a cheery “Good-night, Owen!” “Is it possible that the fellow has cut out Tom Hogben, and is making up to Dilly Topham?” he said to his daughter. “I’m sure I don’t know,” she answered stiffly. “I should not have thought she was _his_ sort; but one never can tell! At any rate, she was crying and holding his hand--there must be an understanding between them, eh?” But Aurea made no reply; apparently she was engrossed in watching a long train of rooks flying quickly homewards--drifting across the rose-tinted sky--and had not heard the question. Her father glanced at her; her pretty lips were very tightly compressed, one would almost suppose that something had annoyed Aurea! * * * * * That evening, when Tom was at the Drum, Wynyard had a serious conversation with Mrs. Hogben--a really straight and private talk, respecting her son and his love-affair. “If Leila were to see me now!” he said to himself, “trying to engineer this job, how she would laugh!” To his landlady he pointed out that one was not always young, and that Tom and Dilly had been engaged four years. (He had a vague idea that Tom’s wages and Tom’s company all to herself, were considerable factors in his mother’s reluctance to name the wedding-day.) And for once Wynyard was positively eloquent! He put down his pipe, and spoke. He pleaded as he had never in his life pleaded for himself--he felt amazed by his own arguments! Mrs. Hogben was thunder-struck; generally, the fellow had not a word to throw to a dog, and now to hear him talk! “Think, Mrs. Hogben,” he urged, “what is Tom to wait for? He has his twenty-five shillings a week and this house--it’s his, I understand,” and he paused. “If Dilly gives him up who will blame her? She has waited--and for what?” Another dramatic pause. “_You_ are waiting for Mrs. Topham to die. She is likely to hold on another ten or twenty years. You say this is a healthy place--and she may even see you out; it’s a way old people have--they get the living habit, and hold on in spite of no end of illnesses. And I tell you plainly that if Dilly throws over Tom--as she threatens--Tom will go to the bad; and then perhaps you will be sorry and blame yourself when it’s too late.” By this time Mrs. Hogben was in tears. “And so I’m to turn out, am I?--out of the house I was in ever since I married and the house where my poor husband died of ‘roses on the liver’” (_cirrhosis_) “and let that giddy girl in on all my good china and linen,” she sobbed stertorously.