Generally, and especially in business hours, her pretty face was calm and slightly haughty, and rash male customers who attempted to make the choice of a "button-hole" an excuse for flirtation were not encouraged to persevere. She was seldom demonstrative to Leander--it was not her way--but she accepted his effusive affection very contentedly, and, indeed, returned it more heartily than her principles allowed her to admit; for she secretly admired his spirit and fluency, and, as is often the case in her class of life, had no idea that she was essentially her lover's superior. After the first greetings, they walked slowly round the square together, his arm around her waist. Neither said very much for some minutes, but Leander was wildly, foolishly happy, and there was no severity in Matilda's eyes when they shone in the lamp-light. "Well," he said, at last, "and so I've actually got you safe back again, my dear, darling Tillie! It seems like a long eternity since last we met. I've been so beastly miserable, Matilda!" "You do seem to have got thinner in the face, Leander dear," said Matilda, compassionately. "What _have_ you been doing while I've been away?" "Only wishing my dearest girl back, that's all _I've_ been doing." "What! haven't you given yourself any enjoyment at all--not gone out anywhere all the time?" "Not once--leastwise, that is to say----" A guilty memory of Rosherwich made him bungle here. "Why, of course I didn't expect you to stop indoors all the time," said Matilda, noticing the amendment, "so long as you never went where you wouldn't take me." Oh, conscience, conscience! But Rosherwich didn't count--it was outside the radius; and besides, he _hadn't_ enjoyed himself. "Well," he said, "I did go out one evening, to hear a lecture on Astronomy at the Town Hall, in the Gray's Inn Road; but then I had the ticket given me by a customer, and I reely was surprised to find how regular the stars was in their habits, comets and all. But my 'Tilda is the only star of the evening for me, to-night. I don't want to talk about anything else." The diversion was successful, and Matilda asked no more inconvenient questions. Presently she happened to cough slightly, and he touched accusingly the light summer cloak she was wearing. "You're not dressed warm enough for a night like this," he said, with a lover's concern. "Haven't you got anything thicker to put on than that?" "I haven't bought my winter things yet," said Matilda; "it was so mild, that I thought I'd wait till I could afford it better. But I've chosen the very thing I mean to buy. You know Mrs. Twilling's, at the top of the Row, the corner shop? Well, in the window there's a perfectly lovely long cloak, all lined with squirrel's fur, and with those nice oxidized silver fastenings. A cloak like that lasts ever so long, and will always look neat and quiet; and any one can wear it without being stared after; so I mean to buy it as soon as it turns really cold."