Her impulsive George choked for words. “Not right! 'Pon my soul, Mary, I simply don't understand you sometimes. Not _right! Why_ isn't it right?” It was so difficult to tell. “You don't understand, dear--” “No, I'm damned if I do. I'm sorry, Mary, but you are so funny, you women. It's so exasperating after the--the devil of a day I've had. Just when I've fixed up everything you turn round and”--he threw out an angry hand--“_Why_ isn't it right?” This poor little Mary clung to her little principles. “Don't you see? we're engaged, dear; and being engaged, we oughtn't to live alone like this. People would--” He began to rave. Certainly he had had a devil of a day; and this was a maddening buffet. “People!” he cried. “People! People! You're always thinking of people, you women! Who's to know? Who on earth's to know?” The instinct of generations of training gave her the instinctive reply in the instinctive sweet little tone: “We should know, Georgie,” she said. He flung up his arms: “Oh, good God!” He swallowed his boiling irritation; laughed 'spite himself; went to his Mary. “Mary, don't be such an utter, utter goose. It's too, too ridiculous.” She took his kiss; but she held her stupid little ground. “It wouldn't be right, Georgie, _really_!” Her George clanged the bell with a furious stroke that brought Mrs. Pinking in panic up the stairs. Holding himself very straight, speaking in sentences short and hard, paying to his Mary no smallest attention, he made the arrangements. Miss Humfray would take on her bedroom again. By the week. If Mrs. Pinking would be so kind as to allow them the same terms. He thanked her. That was settled, then. He would look in in the morning. He would say good night, Mrs. Pinking. Mrs. Pinking gave him good night; busied herself with the tea-things. Her presence enabled this brutal George to preserve his stony bearing; denied his pretty Mary opportunity to melt him with her tears. Hard as flint, “Well, good night,” he said to her. “I'll look in to-morrow morning.” Upon a little sniff, “Good night,” she whispered; strangled an “Oh, George! George!” She followed him to the door. He was down the stairs before she could command her voice for: “Where shall you go, George?” With the reckless fury of one who sets forth to plunge into the river, he called back, “I? I? Oh, _anywhere--anywhere_. Who cares where _I_ go?” The hall door slammed. * * * * * Late into that night while a young woman sobbed her pretty eyes out upon a pillow in a back room of Meath Street, Battersea, a young man, who furiously had been pacing London, paced and repaced the street from end to end, gazing the windows of the house where she lay. This young man muttered, gesticulated, groaned. “Oh, damn!” was his song. “Oh, Mary! Oh, what a cursed brute I am!” It was a bitter ending to a fearful day. CHAPTER VII. Mr. William Wyvern In Meath Street. I.