The room was very cold. A faint smell of warm india-rubber and a molehill in the middle of the bed showed that a hot bottle was found more economical than coal. "Why on earth don't you have a fire?" he asked, still standing in the doorway, personally aggrieved at her economies. Di's economies had often been the subject of sore annoyance to him. An anxious housekeeper in her teens sometimes retrenches in the wrong place, namely where it is unpalatable to the husband. Di had cured herself of this fault of late years, but it cropped up now and again, especially when he returned home unexpectedly as to-day, and found only mutton chops for dinner. "It was the coal bill that the man came about this evening," she said, apathetically, and then the peculiar distressed look giving place to a more human expression, as she suddenly became aware of the reproach her words implied, she added quickly, "but I am not the least cold, thanks." Still he lingered; a sense of ill-usage generally needs expression. "Why did not you come back to the drawing-room again?" There was no answer. "I must say you have a knack of making a man's home uncommonly pleasant for him." Still no answer. Perhaps there were none left. One may come to an end of answers sometimes, like other things--money, for instance. "Is my breakfast ordered for half-past seven, sharp?" "Yes." "Poached eggs?" "Yes, and stewed kidneys. I hope they will be right this time. And I've told Martha to call you at seven punctually." "All right. Good night." "Good night." That had been their parting in this world, Colonel Tempest remembered bitterly, for he had been too much hurried next morning to run up to say good-bye before starting for Scotland. Those had been the last words his wife had spoken to him, the woman for whom he had given up his liberty. So much for woman's love and tenderness. And as the train went heavily on its way, he recalled, in spite of himself, the last home-coming after that month's fishing, and the fog that he shot into as he neared King's Cross on that dull April morning six years ago. He remembered his arrival at the house, and letting himself in and going upstairs. The house seemed strangely quiet. In the drawing-room a woman was sitting motionless in the gaslight. She looked up as he came in, and he recognized the drawn, haggard face of Mrs. Courtenay, his wife's mother, whom he had never seen in his house before, and who now spoke to him for the first time since her daughter's marriage. "Is that you?" she said, quietly, her face twitching. "I did not know where you were. You have a daughter, Colonel Tempest, of a few hours old." He raised his eyebrows. "And Di?" he asked. "Pretty comfortable?" The question was a concession to custom on Colonel Tempest's part, for, like others of his enlightened views, he was of course aware that the pains of childbirth are as nothing compared to the twinge of gout in the masculine toe.