disappointment; but she had visions of a foolscap sheet folded away in some queer little bachelor’s box (she couldn’t fancy what men kept in such places) on which the youth’s name would have been written down in very big letters before a solicitor. “Oh, I’m unprotected in the nature of things,” he replied, smiling at his too scrupulous companion. Then he added: “At any rate, it isn’t from that girl any danger will come to me.” “I can’t think why you like her,” Pinnie remarked as if she had spent on the question treasures of impartiality. “It’s jolly to hear one woman on the subject of another,” Hyacinth said. “You’re kind and good and yet you’re ready—!” He gave a sigh as for long experience. “Well, what am I ready to do? I’m not ready to see you gobbled up before my eyes!” “You needn’t be afraid. She won’t drag me to the altar.” “And pray doesn’t she think you good enough—for one of the beautiful ’Ennings?” “You don’t understand, my poor Pinnie,” he wearily pleaded. “I sometimes think there isn’t a single thing in life that you understand. One of these days she’ll marry an alderman.” “An alderman—that creature?” “An alderman or a banker or a bishop or some of that bloated kind. She doesn’t want to end her career to-day—she wants to begin it.” “Well, I wish she’d take you later!” the dressmaker returned. Hyacinth said nothing for a little, but then broke out: “What are you afraid of? Look here, we had better clear this up once for all. Are you afraid of my marrying a girl out of a shop?” “Oh, you wouldn’t, would you?” cried Pinnie with conciliatory eagerness. “That’s the way I like to hear you talk!” “Do you think I’d marry any one who would marry me?” Hyacinth went on. “The kind of girl who’d look at me is the kind of girl I’d never look at.” He struck Pinnie as having thought it all out; which didn’t surprise her, as she had been familiar from his youth with his way of following things up. But she was always delighted when he made a remark that showed he was conscious of being of fine clay—flashed out an allusion to his not being what he seemed. He was not what he seemed, but even with Pinnie’s valuable assistance he had not succeeded in representing to himself very definitely what he was. She had placed at his disposal for this purpose a passionate idealism which, employed in some case where it could have consequences, might have been termed profligate and which yet never cost her a scruple or a compunction.