On one of these evenings she met her husband's partner, old Fareham, as he was always called, at dinner, at a large sumptuous Liverpool party. There was to be a great ball that evening, and Mrs Lycett-Landon and her two eldest children had come "across" for the two entertainments, and were to stay all night. The luxury of the food and the splendour of the accompaniments I may leave to the imagination. It was such a dinner as is rarely to be seen out of commercial circles. The table groaned, not under good cheer, as used to be the case, but under silver of the highest workmanship, and the most costly flowers. The flowers alone cost as much as would have fed a street full of poor people, for they were not, I need scarcely say, common ones, things that any poor curate or even clerk might have on his table, but waxy and wealthy exotics, combinations of the chemist's skill with the gardener's, all the more difficult to be had in such profusion because the season was summer and the gardens full of Nature's easy production. Mr Fareham nodded to his partner's wife, catching her eye with difficulty between the piles of flowers. "Heard from London lately?" he said across the table, and nodded again several times when she answered, "Not for some days." Old Fareham was usually a jocose old gentleman, less perfect in his manners than the other member of the firm, and of much lower origin, though perhaps more congenial to the atmosphere in which he lived; but he was not at all jocose that evening. He had a cloud upon his face. When his genial host tried to rouse him to his usual "form" (for what can be more disappointing than an amusing man who will not do anything to amuse?) he would brighten up for a moment, and then relapse into dulness. As soon as he came into the drawing-room after dinner he made his way to his partner's wife. "So you haven't been hearing regularly from London?" he said, taking up his post in front of her, and bending over her low chair. "I didn't say that; I said not for a few days." "Neither have we," said old Fareham, shaking his white head. "Not at all regular. D'ye think he is quite well? He has been a deal in town this year." She could scarcely restrain a little indignation, thinking if old Fareham only knew the reason, and how it was to save his relative and set him right! But she answered in an easy tone, "Yes, he has thought it expedient--for various reasons." If he had the least idea of his nephew's irregularities, this, she thought, would make him wince. But it did not. "Oh, for various reasons?" he said, lifting his shaggy eyebrows. "And did you think it expedient too?" "You know I enter very little into business matters," she replied, with the calm she felt. "Of course we all miss him very much when he is away from home; but I never have put myself in Robert's way."