"Hold your tongue, Winny," said Gerald angrily, pulling her back as she was about either to spring out or to stop the driver. "The luggage is all right. It will be sent to the lodgings." "But we want some of the things at once," said Winny piteously. "What shall we do without them?" "The best you can," coolly answered Gerald. "Did you suppose you were going to fill Hamish Channing's hall with boxes and bundles?" Mrs. Channing stood ready to receive them with her face of welcome, and the first thing Winny did was to burst into tears and sob out the grievance about the luggage in her arms. If Gerald Yorke had married a pretty wife, he had also married a silly and incapable one: and Gerald had known it for some years now. Just waiting to hand them over to Mrs. Channing's care, and to give the written address of the lodgings, Gerald left. He was engaged that afternoon to dine with a party at Richmond, and would not see his wife again before the morrow. "Don't--you--mean--to live with us?" she ventured to ask, on hearing him say this, her face growing white with dismay. "Of course I shall live with you," sharply answered Gerald. "But I have my chambers, and when engagements keep me out, shall sleep at them." And Gerald, lightly vaulting into a passing hansom, was cantered off. Winny turned to her good friend Ellen Channing for consolation, who gave her the best that the circumstances admitted of. Hamish, beyond his bright welcome, saw very little of Winny that evening; he was shut up with her husband's manuscript. He took her home at night. The lodgings engaged by Gerald consisted of a sitting-room and two bedchambers, the people of the house to cook and give attendance. Hamish paid the cab and accompanied her indoors. The first thing Mrs. Gerald Yorke did, was to sit down on the lowest chair, and begin to cry. Her little girls, worn out with the day's excitement and the happy play in Nelly Channing's nursery, were fit to drop with fatigue, and put themselves quietly on the carpet. "Oh, Mr. Channing! do you think he is not going to forgive me! It is so cruel of him to send us into this strange place all alone." "He had an engagement, you know," answered Hamish, his tone taking, perhaps unconsciously, the same kind of soothing persuasion that he would have used to a child. "London engagements are sometimes not to be put off." "I wish I was back in Gloucestershire!" she bewailed. "It will be all right, Mrs. Yorke," he returned gaily. "One always feels unhappy in a fresh place. The night Ellen first slept in London she cried to be back at Helstonleigh." A servant, who looked untidy enough to have a world full of work upon her back, showed Hamish out. In answer to a question, she said that she was the only one kept, and would have to wait on the new lodgers. Hamish slipped some money into the girl's hand and bade her do all she could for the lady and the little children.