Silence fell between them. "This is going to be a big blaze," Paul remarked presently. "I hope you won’t find it too hot." "Oh no," Hazel replied rather vaguely. She was trying to screw up her courage to ask that which she had come to ask. Why not out with, it now, whilst his eyes were turned from her? Indeed, if she slipped into that other chair, she would be quite out of his range of vision. "Mr. Charteris," came a very small voice from somewhere behind him—she had contrived the exchange of seats so quietly that he, intent upon his work, had not noticed the movement—"Mr. Charteris, are you giving—that is, are you in a sort of way—I mean, do you——" Her voice quavered, and she stopped. Paul wheeled round and stood before her, regarding her in amazement. She looked up at him piteously, and then away again. Paul, half amused, half concerned at the obvious perturbation and perplexity of mind under which she was labouring, waited in silence, a silence fraught with sympathy, for her to continue. "Oh, could not you turn your back again?" she cried in desperation, "and—and I’ll try to tell you." Paul, with one stride, was beside her and, kneeling upon one knee to bring himself to her level, took both tremulous hands in his. "What is it, little one?" he asked. "What is this dreadful, ’serious’ something you have on your mind?" "Won’t you please to go away or walk about?" she besought him. But Paul knew that this would be just as difficult for her. "No," he said firmly. "Just tell me, Hazel, and get it over." "But perhaps it is horrid and—and unladylike of me," she wailed. "Perhaps you will be hurt or offended." "Tell me," he repeated gently. Hazel moved restively in her chair. "I wish I had not come here," she said rebelliously. Paul waited, and then, with a little gasp, it all came out. "It is about Hugh. Are you having him in—in charity?" Her voice sank to a whisper upon the last, fateful word, and she lay back in her chair, and tightly closed her eyes. What would he say? How would he take it? She had not the courage to look at him. But Paul never seemed to fail her—he did not fail her now. "Hazel," he said quietly, after a long pause, "what put such an idea into your head?" "Uncle Percival," Hazel answered laconically, with startling promptitude. Slowly she opened her eyes, but she turned her look away from him. Paul rose to his feet and quietly began to pace the floor. "Uncle Percival ought to be—boiled," he said at length, indignantly. "How came he to mention the topic at all to you?" "I called upon him," Hazel rejoined; and she proceeded to relate what had passed between herself and her relative. "You are a plucky child to have ’bearded’ him," Paul observed, when she had finished. He had heard much of "Uncle Percival," but little to his credit.