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in the deprecating, timid manner of a very young wife, who is aware that she stands in the presence of a connoisseur, who must not be allowed to sound the depths of her own enlightenment.

Then she arranged the flowers, and wrote a few letters at her writing-table.

At eleven he had not returned, and she dressed and went to her dressmaker.

At one o'clock her mother came to luncheon, and commented on his absence.

Mrs Martin was very troubled over Lucille's marriage. Every one had told her that it was a mistake to allow the marriage to take place while Lucille was still so young, just seventeen, and especially with a man like Clifford Yelverton. To be sure, he was at the right age—thirty, the supposed prime of life of manhood's estate; but Clifford Yelverton was a man of no age. He had never been young. It was also likely that he would never grow old. He was a genius, people said, a man who had best leave marriage alone, go his own way; a man who needed no human companionship, whose own thought sufficed him. And it was no good Mrs Martin saying that Lucille was sensible, old for her age. She was merely demure, methodical, but quite a child—a child in sense, without the attributes