“I’ll lend you mine,” suggested Morris. “No; other people’s lamps always go out with me, and so do my own, for that matter. I’ll risk it; I know the policeman, and if we meet I will argue with him. Good-bye; don’t forget we are coming to dinner to-morrow night. It’s a party, isn’t it?” “I believe so.” “What a bore, I must unpack my London dresses. Well, good-bye again.” “Good-bye, dear,” answered Morris, and she was gone. “‘Dear,’” thought Mary to herself; “he hasn’t called me that since I was sixteen. I wonder why he does it now? Because I have been scolding him, I suppose; that generally makes men affectionate.” For a while she glided forward through the grey twilight, and then began to think again, muttering to herself: “You idiot, Mary, why should you be pleased because he called you ‘dear’? He doesn’t really care two-pence about you; his blood goes no quicker when you pass by and no slower when you stay away. Why do you bother about him? and what made you talk all that stuff this afternoon? Because you think he is in a queer way, and that if he goes on giving himself up to his fancies he will become mad—yes, mad—because—Oh! what’s the use of making excuses—because you are fond of him, and always have been fond of him from a child, and can’t help it. What a fate! To be fond of a man who hasn’t the heart to care for you or for any other woman. Perhaps, however, that’s only because he hasn’t found the right one, as he might do at any time, and then——” “Where are you going to, and where’s your light?” shouted a hoarse voice from the pathway on which she was unlawfully riding. “My good man, I wish I knew,” answered Mary, blandly. Morris, for whom the day never seemed long enough, was a person who breakfasted punctually at half-past eight, whereas Colonel Monk, to whom—at any rate at Monksland—the day was often too long, generally breakfasted at ten. To his astonishment, however, on entering the dining-room upon the morrow of his interview in the workshop with Mary, he found his father seated at the head of the table. “This means a ‘few words’ with me about something disagreeable,” thought Morris to himself as he dabbed viciously at an evasive sausage. He was not fond of these domestic conversations. Nor was he in the least reassured by his father’s airy and informed comments upon the contents of the “Globe,” which always arrived by post, and the marvel of its daily “turnover” article, whereof the perpetual variety throughout the decades constituted, the Colonel was wont to say, the eighth wonder of the world. Instinct, instructed by experience, assured him that these were but the first moves in the game. Towards the end of the meal he attempted retreat, pretending that he wanted to fetch something, but the Colonel, who was watching him over the top of the pink page of the “Globe,” intervened promptly. “If you have a few minutes to spare, my dear boy, I should like to have a chat with you,” he said.