One afternoon, about half-past three o’clock, Joan was standing in the mantle department of Messrs. Black and Parker’s establishment awaiting customers. The morning had been a heavy one, for town was filling rapidly, and she felt very tired. There was, it is true, no fixed rule to prevent Messrs. Black and Parker’s employés from seating themselves when not actually at work; but since a pique had begun between herself and Mr. Waters, in practice Joan found few opportunities of so doing. On two occasions when she ventured to rest thus for a minute, the manager had rated her harshly for indolence, and she did not care to expose herself to another such experience. Now she was standing, the very picture of weariness and melancholy, leaning upon a chair, when of a sudden she looked up and saw before her—Ellen Graves and Emma Levinger. They were speaking. “Very well, dear,” said Ellen, “you go and buy the gloves while I try on the mantles. I will meet you presently in the doorway.” “Yes,” said Emma, and went. Joan’s first impulse was to fly; but flight was impossible, for with Ellen, rubbing his white hands and bowing at intervals, was Mr. Waters. “I think you asked for velvet mantles, madam, did you not? Now, miss, the velvet mantles—quick, please—those new shapes from Paris.” Almost automatically Joan obeyed, reaching down cloak after cloak to be submitted to Miss Graves’s critical examination. Three or four of them she put by as unsuitable, but at last one was produced that seemed to take her fancy. “I should like the young person to try on this one, please,” she said. “Certainly, madam. Now, miss: no, not that, the other. Where are your wits this afternoon?” Joan put on the garment in silence, turning herself round to display its perfections, with the vain hope that Ellen’s preoccupation and the gathering gloom in the shop would prevent her from being recognised. “It is very dark here,” Ellen said presently. “Yes, madam; but I have ordered them to turn on the electric light. Will you be seated for a moment, madam?” Ellen took a chair, and began chatting with the manager about the advantages of the employment of electricity in preference to gas in shops, while Joan, with the cloak still on her shoulders, stood before them in the shadow. Just then she heard a footstep, the footstep of a lame man who was advancing towards them from the stairs, and the sound set her wondering if Henry had recovered from his lameness. Next moment she was clinging to the back of a chair to save herself from falling headlong to the floor, for the man was speaking. “Are you here, Ellen?” he said: “it is so infernally dark in this place. Oh! there you are. I met Miss Levinger below, and she told me that I should find you upstairs trying on bodices or something.” “One does not generally try on bodices in public, Henry. What is the matter?”