repentance and return were hopeless. Shafto listened to Cossie’s hysterical lamentations and outpourings with what patience he could assume; until by degrees the dreadful truth began to dawn on him, that _he_ was selected to replace the faithless Lothario! Of late Cossie’s manner had become jealously possessive, She seemed to hold him by a nipping tenacious clutch, and pattered out to meet him at the gate, sat next to him at table, and was invariably his partner at tennis. Once, arriving unseen, he had overheard her declaiming to another girl: “No, no, no, I won’t have it; Douglas is my boy—and my joy! Douglas belongs to _me_!” “There will be two opinions about that,” he muttered to himself, as he flung down his hat and entered the tawdry little drawing-room; but, in spite of his stern resolutions, he found himself borne along by a strong and irresistible current of family goodwill. Sandy gave him cigars, Delia declared over and over again that he was a “darling,” his aunt became extra-motherly, and Cossie endowed him with button-holes, pairs of ill-knit shapeless socks, and sent him many notes. She seemed to appropriate him as a matter of course, and once when they parted at the gate, had held up her face to be kissed—but this undesired favour he affected not to see. He noted, too, that when Cossie accompanied him to the same little gate, Delia and Sandy lingered behind with alarming significance. He began to hate Cossie and to revolt against the slap-dash untidy _ménage_, Delia and her train of rowdy boys, the shouting, the practical jokes, and the slang. Then suddenly the Levison cloud burst! One night, when he was flying upstairs to his sky parlour, his mother waylaid him on the landing and, with an imperative gesture, beckoned him into her room. “Shut the door, Douglas!” she commanded in her usual frigid manner, “I have something to tell you. Come over here and sit down.” “Yes, mother, all right,” but nevertheless he remained standing; “what is it?” She cleared her throat and replied in her sharp metallic voice, “Mr. Levison and I have at last made up our minds to be married; you see, we have no one to consider but ourselves.” This announcement was followed by a blank and paralysed silence. “He is absolutely devoted to me,” resumed Mrs. Shafto, “and is a wealthy man and, as you know, _I_ was never accustomed to poverty. The wedding will take place in six weeks. Well, why do you stand glowering there?” she demanded impatiently. “What have you got to say?” “I have got to say,” replied Douglas, then his voice broke a little, “that I don’t see how you can do it, or put that fat Jew tradesman into my father’s place!”