“Here we are,” said Mr. Welsh, “The Avenue—the most stylish part of Shepherd’s Bush, as it is of New York. You sit still in the fly whilst I go in and make an explanation to her ladyship. I’ll take that bottle of Noyeau you have been nursing; I have the canister of prawns in my coat-pocket; I am sorry before purchasing it that I forgot to ask you if you preferred Loch Awe salmon. What is your favourite tipple? You will hear from my wife that we have no cook. The last we got became inebriated, and we had to dismiss her. We have been without one for a fortnight. Tryphœna—that is, her ladyship—upon my word I have been so mixed up with aristocrats of late, that I find myself giving a title to every one I meet. What was I saying? Oh! that her ladyship has all the cooking to do now? You sit quiet. No fumbling after your purse; I pay the cabby because I engaged him. We of the Upper Ten, under present depression, do not keep our own carriages and livery servants—we hire as we want.” Under all Welsh’s rollicking humour lay real kindness of heart. Arminell felt it, and drew towards this man, so unlike any other man with whom she was acquainted, or whom she had met. She knew that he was perfectly reliable, that he would do everything in his power to serve her, and that a vast store of tenderness and consideration lay veiled under an affectation of boisterousness and burlesque. How is it that when we do a kindness we endeavour to minimise it? We disguise the fact that what we do costs us something, that it gives us trouble, that it draws down on us irksome responsibilities? It is not that we are ashamed of ourselves for doing kindnesses, that we think it unmanly to be unselfish, but rather that we fear to embarrass the person who receives favours at our hands. Mr. Welsh had really sacrificed much that day for Arminell. He was to have met an editor and arranged with him for articles for his paper. He had not kept his appointment; that might possibly be resented, and lead to pecuniary loss, to some one else being engaged in his room. Editors are unforgiving. “Yes,” said Mr. Welsh that same afternoon, when he found that what he dreaded had occurred, “a Domitian is possible still in our costume, but the tyrants confine their ferocity to aspirants after literary work. They cut off their heads, they put out their eyes, and they disjoint their noses wholesale.”