There was a servant of the name of Lucy, who laid two more places clumsily and with some noise. Janet had disappeared into the kitchen and Morelli maintained the conversation. There was, however, a feeling of constraint. Maradick had never known Tony so silent. He stood by the fireplace, awkwardly shifting from one leg to the other, and looking continually at the door. He was evidently in a state of the greatest excitement, and he seemed to pay no attention to anyone in the room. Miss Minns was perfectly silent, and stood there gravely waiting. Morelli talked courteously and intelligently, but Maradick felt that he himself was being used merely as a background to the rest of the play. His first feeling on seeing Janet had been that Tony was indeed justified in all his enthusiasm; his second, that he himself was in for rather a terrible time. He had not in the least expected her to be so amazingly young. He had, quite without reason or justification, expected her to be older, a great deal older, than Tony, and that chiefly, perhaps, because he couldn’t, by any stretch of imagination, believe her to be younger. Tony was so young in every way—in his credibility, his enthusiasm, his impatience, his quite startling simplicity. With this in front of him, Maradick had looked to the lady as an accomplice; she would help, he had thought, to teach Tony discretion. And now, with that vision of her on the stairs, he saw that she was, so to speak, “younger than ever,” as young as anyone possibly could be. That seemed to give the whole business a new turn altogether; it suddenly placed him, James Maradick, a person of unimaginative and sober middle age, in a romantic and difficult position of guardian to a couple of babies, and, moreover, babies charged to the full with excitement and love of hurried adventure. Why, he thought desperately, as he listened politely to Morelli’s conversation, had he been made the centre of all this business? What did he or could he know of young people and their love affairs? “I am afraid,” he said politely, “I know nothing whatever about swords.” “Ah,” said Morelli heartily, “I must show you some after supper.” Janet entered with chops and potatoes, followed by Lucy with the coffee. Tony went forward to help her. “No, thank you,” she said, laughing. “You shan’t carry the potatoes because then you’ll see how black they are. I hope you don’t mind coffee at the beginning like this; and there’s only brown bread.” She placed the things on the table and helped the chops. Tony looked at his plate and was silent. It was, at first, a difficult meal, and everyone was very subdued; then suddenly the ice was broken. Maradick had said that he lived in London. Miss Minns sat up a little straighter in her chair, smoothed her cuffs nervously, and said with a good deal of excitement—