his wife’s taste and superior knowledge, while she was inspecting those treasures which he declared he did not understand. But he did understand bric-a-brac, it turned out, much better than Evelyn did, though perhaps his taste in pictures was not so pure. Thus the days passed by; and though those pleasures depended very much on the depth of Mr. Rowland’s purse, they could scarcely be called vulgar pleasures, although Evelyn sometimes at the end of the day blushed to think how she had enjoyed herself. Was it the fact of spending money, an operation which in itself seemed to give pleasure to her husband, or was it the acquisition of so many valuable and beautiful things which was delightful? It was complicated, as everything human is, with the contrast of previous life, with the pleasure of pleasing him by being pleased herself, even perhaps a little by the obsequious respect by which their progress was attended. This was a poor view, and we are poor creatures, the best of us--for there was something even in that. As for the purchases themselves, Evelyn knew that a cracked pot, a scrap of an old picture, a bit of clumsy carving, was capable of giving quite as much pleasure as all the treasures of art which accumulated in their rooms at the hotel. Happily there is compensation in all things, and the highest of all delights, in bric-a-brac at least, is not to him who buys whatever strikes his fancy, regardless of expenses, but to him who “picks up” an unexpected gem, for a few pence or shillings, in some ignoble corner where no such treasure could be suspected to be. And they dined out in the evenings, at the Leightons, of course, and at other places where the great railway man found himself a sort of lion, to his great astonishment, where he expected modestly to be received, chiefly on his wife’s account, in spheres which were not his. In this point of view Mr. Rowland was delighted, and Evelyn was as proud of her husband as he could be of her, which was saying a great deal. Like many other people in this world, Rowland was not in the least vain of the real work he had done. He was aware that he had been very lucky in many things, in the means he had employed, in the curious natural facilities which always came in his way; but his own skill and patience and thought did not seem to come into his mind as deserving of special distinction. “Oh, of course, since it was my business, I tried to do it the best I could,” he said, as if that were the most natural thing in the world. It was his assistants who were the wonderful fellows; he was so fortunate in always getting hold of the best men; no man but had been true to him, as Brutus says. Evelyn sat by and listened with such light in her eyes that her friend, Lady Leighton, looked at her in wonder. “Why, you are in love with him!” said that woman of the world.