He was reassuring about the ankle; a slight strain that with care--his own and Sir Rhyscombe Edison's--would disappear in a day or two. Oh no!--in answer to inquiry--Miss Arkroyd had not been compelled to keep her bed; a phrase that entered a respectful protest against "stop in bed," the coarse, familiar expression Mr. Challis had made use of. But he was, after all, a married man with a family, so it might be overlooked, this once. He went on to say that Miss Arkroyd, he believed, was up, though nursing the injured limb on a sofa. He arrived, after responsible doubts, at the conclusion that he might send Mr. Challis's card up, in case of any message. Delicacy dictating a female emissary, Samuel was despatched with it to Miss Arkroyd's maid; who presently, being an unpolished sample from the dairy at Royd, came down and said briefly that Mr. Challis was to come up. Mr. Elphinstone's expression was well-restrained protest. But it may not have been so much the little dairy-maiden's bluntness that provoked it, as an indescribably small shade of demeanour of Mr. Challis's. As the girl came along the passage, and before she spoke, Challis threw his cigar away, or the two-thirds that was left of it. Such a little matter! But unless he had known what she was going to say, he surely would have kept it till he did, to finish at leisure. How came he to be so positive? Anyhow, there it was!--the cigar--not half smoked, on the pavement when the house door closed. And the cabman's eye rested on it. And he spoke thus to a butcher's boy, who appeared from an area: "Wipe your fingers on your apron, young dripping, and just hand me up that cigar, and I'll see if I'll smoke it. I ain't proud. Only don't you discharge off any of your natural grease upon it!" To be addressed, even in disparaging terms, by such a hansom, was flattering to this butcher-boy's vanity, and he did not resent it. "Licked, but not busted, that I can see!" was his comment as he handed the cigar up to the cabman, who went on with it, contentedly. It is two months of the story since it saw, or rather heard of, Miss Arkroyd and Mr. Challis driving up to this door after midnight in another hansom. All that it said, or implied, at that time amounted to little more than that a not very strait-laced lady and gentleman had been rather free and easy over some theatrical schemes interesting to both, and that the lady's sister, being less free or less easy, had intimated that the conduct of the two might be laced a little more straitly, with advantage. It is over six months of the story since they discussed "The Spendthrift's Legacy" and "Ziz" in the garden at Royd. If Charlotte Eldridge, as an authority, had been asked, "On which of these two occasions, madam, should you suppose the chances were best of this gentleman and lady supplying you with a story made to your hand, akin to the one Robert Browning never went on with?" what would her answer have been?