He was a short and broad and ugly man, approaching middle age; of a commonplace cut of features, of poor birth, of mean fortunes, of small account in the scheme of things; but he had an eye for beauty; he had a soul; and his eye was filled with a beauty completely satisfying his conception; and with his soul he worshipped the soul of Deleah. "I am sorry," he suddenly said, cutting across some little triviality of hers with which she was striving to cover his silence--"sorry you did not have even one of the roses I walked ten miles to get for you." "I?" she glanced fleetingly at him. "Oh, it does not matter, of course. Bessie has them, and she loves them so. I had far rather Bessie had them." He gazed upon her, reproachful but silent. "Bessie so loves flowers," she said, remembering how Bessie had pounced upon the poor roses before they had been offered. It had not been a pretty sight--but Bessie--poor Bessie!--did such things. "Miss Bessie so loves them to wear in her dress," he corrected. And at that moment Miss Bessie burst into the room, attired for conquest and for church, the flowers which the boarder had walked so far to procure, pinned, as was the mode of the day, beneath the collar of her jacket. Gibbon glanced grudgingly at them, nestling becomingly enough under Bessie's plump chin. "Oh, how glum you look!" cried Bessie in the best of spirits. "Not glum at all," said Mr. Gibbon with something less than his usual politeness of tone. "Only cross? Ah! I am so afraid of you! I must run away." She beckoned to Deleah, who followed her to the tiny landing. "The Honourable Charles has got his back up because of Reggie," she whispered, "and Reggie is furious because of the Honourable Charles's flowers. Did you hear how he snapped at me just now?" "Why should Mr. Gibbon be angry because of Reggie?" "Oh, my dear innocent babe! Don't you know that men are sometimes jealous?" "Yes. I know it. And I know another thing: and that is you were doing your best to make them jealous." Bessie laughed delightedly as at a compliment: "I leave one of them to you. Try to get him into a better frame of mind before I come back," she said, and turned to run downstairs. Deleah leaned over the railing of the tiny landing, lit by a single gas-jet above her head, to watch her go. She liked to see Bessie good-tempered and in good spirits, and if to believe that every man she knew was in love with her made her so, Deleah was willing to humour her. About the devotion of young Forcus for Bessie she had her doubts, but that of the lodger she took as a matter of course. He was still seated at the table when she returned to him; the bread-and-butter she had cut for him untouched on his plate, his tea untasted. "I thought perhaps you were not coming back," he said. He sighed, as if relieved from an anxiety which had been painful. "Miss Deleah, I wish very much to speak to you."