He made his way to Montmorency Road, West Kensington, exactly at four o'clock, and while he sat in the pretty drawing-room talking to Mrs. Waldron, who was alone at present--the appearance of Bella being promised by her mother in a few moments--he found himself wondering what the girl did with her life here. He had seen a bicycle in the passage as he was shown upstairs, so he supposed she rode that; while there were some photographs of rather good-looking men standing about on the semi-grand and on the plush-covered mantelshelf--which made him feel horribly annoyed, until Mrs. Waldron, seeing his glance fixed on them, informed him that they were mostly cousins who were out of the country, and that one or two of them happened to have succumbed to various climatic disorders abroad, for which catastrophes he did not seem to feel as sorry as he supposed he ought to do. Then Bella came in, looking radiantly beautiful in a summer dress (a description of which masculine ignorance renders impossible), and Stephen Charke was happy for ten minutes. For they all talked of the impending _fêtes_ at Portsmouth in honour of the foreign fleet, and Charke found himself in an Elysium when Bella promised him--without the slightest self-consciousness or false shame--that she would undoubtedly have some dances reserved for him. Yet, soon, other callers came in, and Stephen Charke found himself deprived of the pleasure of further conversation with Bella. An elderly dowager claimed her attention, and a middle-aged lady--of, as he considered, menacing aspect--regaled him with the evil doings of her domestic servants, a subject of about as much interest to this wanderer of the seas as that of embroidery or tatting would have been. An Irish Doctor of Divinity also disturbed his meditations on Bella's beauty by telling funny stories, the point of which the divine had forgotten until he refreshed his memory by reference to a little note-book in which he had them all written down, while a young militia subaltern who had failed for the Army--and seemed rather proud of it!--irritated him beyond endurance. Yet, even through this fatuous individual, there came something that was welcome to him, since he saw Bella regarding the youth with a look of scarcely veiled contempt, and he longed to tell the idiot that the only failure for which women have no pity in this world is that of the intellect. 'Goodbye,' he said to Bella, who accompanied him to the head of the stairs, after he had made his adieux to her mother. 'Goodbye. Next week--Portsmouth--and--my dances.' 'I shall not forget,' she said. After which he wandered off by devious and intricate ways (which reminded him of some of the narrow passages he knew of between the islands in the China seas) and so arrived at the District Railway.