“Waterloo Station, Main Line,” cried Sartwell, sharply. “Yessir,” said the cabby, exceedingly wide awake, as he gathered up the reins. The porter opened the gates. “Everything all right, Perkins?” “All right, sir,” answered the porter, touching his cap. “Keep a sharp look-out, you know.” “Yes, sir.” The rapidly lessening rattle of the hansom down the narrow street came back to Perkins as he closed the big gates for the night. CHAPTER III. As father and daughter approached Wimbledon a mutual silence came over them. Perhaps this was because they had talked so much in the office. When they passed the station gates, Sartwell said: “We’ll have a cab, Edna, and blow the expense.” “I don’t mind walking in the least; there is no fog here.” “We’re late, so we’ll have a cab.” Once inside, he added, reflectively: “I wonder why it is that a cab seems extravagance in Wimbledon and economy in London.” This apparently was a problem neither of them could solve, so nothing more was said until the vehicle drew up at the door of a walled garden in a quiet street near the breezy common. Sartwell put his key in the door, held it open, and let his daughter pass in before him. A square house stood about a hundred yards back from the street, surrounded by shrubbery and flower-beds. The two walked somewhat gingerly up the crunching gravel path, opened the front door, and entered a dimly-lighted hall. Sartwell placed his hat on the rack, pushed open the dining-room door and went in, this time preceding his daughter. There were many comfortable chairs in the room, and one that was not comfortable. On that chair sat a woman, tall and somewhat angular, past the prime of life. She sat exceedingly upright, not allowing her shoulders to rest against the chair back. On her face was a patient expression of mitigated martyrdom, the expression of one who was badly used by a callous world, but who is resolved not to allow its ill treatment to interfere with her innate justice in dealing with her fellows. “I thought I heard a cab drive up and stop,” she said mildly, in the tone of one who may be wrong and is willing to be corrected. “You did,” said Sartwell, throwing himself down in an armchair. “Being late, I took a cab from the station.” “Oh!” Much may be expressed by an apparently meaningless interjection. This one signified that Mrs. Sartwell, while shocked at such an admission, bowed to the inevitable, recognizing that she was mated with a man not amenable to reason, and that, while she might say much on the influence of unnecessary lavishness, she repressed herself, although she knew she would have no credit for her magnanimity. After a few moments of silence, during which Mrs. Sartwell critically examined the sewing on which she was engaged, she looked across at her husband, and said: “I may ask, I suppose, if it was business kept you so late.” “Important business.” She sighed.