Sissie even took off one shoe, on the plea that it hurt her, and there the trifling article lay, fragile, gleaming and absurd. Mr. Prohack appreciated it even more than the hats. He understood, perhaps better than ever before, that though he had a vast passion for his wife, there was enough emotion left in him to nourish an affection almost equally vast for his daughter. She was a proud piece, was that girl, and he was intensely proud of her. Nor did a realistic estimate of her faults of character seem in the least to diminish his pride in her. She had distinction; she had race. Mimi might possibly be able to make rings round her in the pursuit of any practical enterprise, but her mere manner of existing from moment to moment was superior to Mimi's. The simple-minded parent was indeed convinced at heart that the world held no finer young woman than Sissie Prohack. He reflected with satisfaction: "She knows I'm old, but there's something young in me that forces her to treat me as young; and moreover she adores me." He also reflected: "Of course they're after something, these two. I can see a put-up job in their eyes." Ah! He was ready for them, and the sensation of being ready for them was like a tonic to him, raising him momentarily above misery.

"You look much better, Arthur," said Eve, artfully preparing.

"I am," said he. "I've had a bath."

"Had you given up baths, dad?" asked Sissie, with a curl of the lips.

"No! But I mean I've had two baths. One in water and the other in resignation."

"How dull!"

"I've been thinking about the arrangements for the wedding," Eve started in a new, falsely careless tone, ignoring the badinage between her husband and daughter, which she always privately regarded as tedious.

There it was! They had come to worry him about the wedding. He had not recovered from one social martyrdom before they were plotting to push him into another. They were implacable, insatiable, were his women. He got up and walked about.

"Now, dad," Sissie addressed him. "Don't pretend you aren't interested." And then she burst into the most extraordinary laughter—laughter that bordered on the hysterical—and twirled herself round on the shod foot. Her behaviour offended Eve.

"Of course if you're going on like that, Sissie, I warn you I shall give it all up. After all, it won't be my wedding."

Sissie clasped her mother's neck.

"Don't be foolish, you silly old mater. It's a wedding, not a funeral."

"Well, what about it?" asked Mr. Prohack, sniffing with pleasure the new atmosphere created in his magnificent study by these feminine contacts.

"Do you think we'd better have the wedding at St. George's, Hanover Square, or at St. Nicodemus's?"

At the name of Nicodemus, Mr. Prohack started, as it were guiltily.

"Because," Eve continued, "we can have it at either place. You see Ozzie lives in one parish and Sissie in the other. St. Nicodemus has been getting rather fashionable lately, I'm told."

"What saith the bride?"

"Oh, don't ask me!" answered Sissie lightly. "I'm prepared for anything. It's mother's affair, not mine, in spite of what she says. And nobody shall be able to say after I'm married that I wasn't a dutiful daughter. I should love St. George's and I should love St. Nicodemus's too." And then she exploded again into disconcerting laughter, and the fit lasted longer than the first one.

Eve protested again and Sissie made peace again.

"St. Nicodemus would be more original," said Eve.

"Not so original as you," said Mr. Prohack.

Sissie choked on a lace handkerchief. St. Nicodemus was selected for the august rite. Similar phenomena occurred when Eve introduced the point whether the reception should be at Manchester Square or at Claridge's Hotel. And when Eve suggested that it might be well to enliven the mournfulness of a wedding with an orchestra and dancing, Sissie leaped up and seizing her father's hand whizzed him dangerously round the room to a tuna of her own singing. The girl's mere physical force amazed him The dance was brought to a conclusion by the overturning of an occasional table and a Tanagra figure. Whereupon Sissie laughed more loudly and hysterically than ever.

Mr. Prohack deemed that masculine tact should be applied. He soothed the outraged mother and tranquillised the ecstatic daughter, and then in a matter-of-fact voice asked: "And what about the date? Do let's get it over."

"We must consult Ozzie," said the pacified mamma.

Off went Sissie again into shrieks.

"You needn't," she spluttered. "It's not Ozzie's wedding. It's mine. You fix your own date, dearest, and leave Ozzie to me, Ozzie's only function at my wedding is to be indispensable." And still laughing in the most crude and shocking way she ran on her uneven feet out of the room, leaving the shoe behind on the hearth-rug to prove that she really existed and was not a hallucination.

"I can't make out what's the matter with that girl," said Eve.

"The sooner she's married the better," said Mr. Prohack, thoroughly reconciled now to the tedium of the ceremonies.

"I daresay you're right. But upon my word I don't know what girls are coming to," said Eve.

"Nobody ever did know that," said Mr. Prohack easily, though he also was far from easy in his mind about the bridal symptoms.

VII

"Can Charlie speak to you for a minute?" The voice was Eve's, diplomatic, apologetic. Her smiling and yet serious face, peeping in through the bedroom door, seemed to say: "I know we're asking a great favour and that your life is hard."

"All right," said Mr. Prohack, as a gracious, long-suffering autocrat, without moving his eyes from the book he was reading.

He had gone to bed. He had of late got into the habit of going to bed. He would go to bed on the slightest excuse, and would justify himself by pointing out that Voltaire used to do the same. He was capable of going to bed several times a day. It was early evening. The bed, though hired for a year only, was of extreme comfortableness. The light over his head was in exactly the right place. The room was warm. The book, by a Roman Emperor popularly known as Marcus Aurelius, counted among the world's masterpieces. It was designed to suit the case of Mr. Prohack, for its message was to the effect that happiness and content are commodities which can be manufactured only in the mind, from the mind's own ingredients, and that if the mind works properly no external phenomena can prevent the manufacture of the said commodities. In short, everything was calculated to secure Mr. Prohack's felicity in that moment. But he would not have it. He said to himself: "This book is all very fine, immortal, supreme, and so on. Only it simply isn't true. Human nature won't work the way this book says it ought to work; and what's more the author was obviously afraid of life, he was never really alive and he was never happy. Finally the tendency of the book is mischievously anti-social." Thus did Mr. Prohack seek to destroy a reputation of many centuries and to deny opinions which he himself had been expressing for many years.

"I don't want to live wholly in myself," said Mr. Prohack. "I want to live a great deal in other people. If you do that you may be infernally miserable but at least you aren't dull. Marcus Aurelius was more like a potato than I should care to be."

And he shoved the book under the pillow, turned half-over from his side to the flat of his back, and prepared with gusto for the evil which Charlie would surely bring. And indeed one glance at Charlie's preoccupied features confirmed his prevision.

"You're in trouble, my lad," said he.

"I am," said Charlie.

"And the hour has struck when you want your effete father's help," Mr. Prohack smiled benevolently.

"Put it like that," said Charlie amiably, taking a chair and smoothing out his trousers.

"I suppose you've seen the references to yourself in the papers?"

"Yes."

"Rather sarcastic, aren't they?"

"Yes. But that rather flatters me, you know, dad. Shows I'm being taken notice of."

"Still, you have been playing a dangerous game, haven't you?"

"Admitted," said Charlie, brightly and modestly. "But I was reading in one of my new books that it is not a bad scheme to live dangerously, and I quite agree. Anyhow it suits me. And it's quite on the cards that I may pull through."

"You mean if I help you. Now listen to me, Charlie. I'm your father, and if you're on earth it's my fault, and everything that happens to you is my fault. Hence I'm ready to help you as far as I can, which is a long way, but I'm not ready to throw my money into a pit unless you can prove to my hard Treasury mind that the pit is not too deep and has a firm unbreakable bottom. Rather than have anything to do with a pit that has all attractive qualities except a bottom, I would prefer to see you in the Bankruptcy Court and make you an allowance for life."

"That's absolutely sound," Charlie concurred with beautiful acquiescence. "And it's awfully decent of you to talk like this. I expect I could soon prove to you that my pit is the sort of pit you wouldn't mind throwing things into, and possibly one day I might ask you to do some throwing. But I'm getting along pretty well so far as money is concerned. I've come to ask you for something else."

"Oh!" Mr. Prohack was a little dashed. But Charlie's demeanour was so ingratiating that he did not feel in the least hurt.

"Yes. There's been some trouble between Mimi and me this afternoon, and I'm hoping that you'll straighten it out for me."

"Ah!" Mr. Prohack's interest became suddenly intense and pleasurable.

"The silly girl's given me notice. She's fearfully hurt because you told her that I told you about the church-clock affair, after it had been agreed between her and me that we wouldn't let on to anybody at all. She says that she can't possibly stay with anybody who isn't loyal, and that I'm not the man she thought I was, and she's given notice!... And I can't do without that girl! I knew she'd be perfectly invaluable to me, and she is."

Mr. Prohack was staggered at this revelation concerning Mimi. It seemed to make her heroic and even more incalculable.

"But I never told her you'd told me anything about the clock-striking business!" he exclaimed.

"I felt sure you hadn't," said Charlie, blandly. "I wonder how she got the idea into her head."

"Now I come to think of it," said Mr. Prohack, "she did assume this morning that you must have told me about the clock, and I didn't contradict her. Why should I!"

"Just so," Charlie smiled faintly. "But I'd be awfully obliged if you'd contradict her now. One word from you will put it all right."

"I'll ask her to come and see me first thing in the morning," said Mr. Prohack. "But would you believe it, my lad, that she never gave me the slightest sign this morning that your telling me anything about the clock would upset her. Not the slightest sign!"

"Oh! She wouldn't!" said Charlie. "She's like that. She's the strangest mixture of reserve and rashness you ever saw."

"No, she isn't. Because they're all the strangest mixture—except of course your esteemed mother, who we all agree is perfect. Anything else I can do for you to-night?"

"You might tell me how you did find out about the church-clock."

"With pleasure. The explanation will surprise you. I found out because in my old-world way I'm jolly clever. And that's all there is to it."

"Good night, dad. Thanks very much."

After Charlie had gone, Mr. Prohack said to himself: "That boy's getting on. I can remember the time when he would have come snorting in here full of his grievance, and been very sarcastic when I offered him money he didn't want. What a change! Oh, yes, he's getting on all right. He'll come through."

And Mr. Prohack was suddenly much fonder of the boy and more inclined to see in him the possibility of genius. But he was aware of apprehension as to the relations forming between his son and Mimi. That girl appeared to be establishing an empire over the great youthful prodigy of finance. Was this desirable?... No, that was not the question. The question was: Would Eve regard it as desirable? He could never explain to his wife how deeply he had been touched by Mimi's mad solicitude for the slumber of Charlie's father. And even if he could have explained Eve would never have consented to understand.



CHAPTER XXI

EVE'S MARTYRDOM

I

After a magnificent night's sleep, so magnificent indeed that he felt as if he had never until that moment really grasped the full significance of the word "sleep," Mr. Prohack rang the bell for his morning tea. Of late he had given orders that he must not under any circumstances be called, for it had been vouchsafed to him that in spite of a multitude of trained servants there were still things that he could do for himself better than anybody else could do for him, and among them was the act of waking up Mr. Prohack. He knew that he was in a very good humour, capable of miracles, and he therefore determined that he would seize the opportunity to find the human side of Mr. Brool and make a friend of him. But the tea-tray was brought in by Mrs. Prohack, who was completely and severely dressed. She put down the tray and kissed her husband not as usual, but rather in the manner of a Roman matron, and Mr. Prohack divined that something had happened.

"I hope Brool hasn't dropped down dead," said he, realising the foolishness of his facetiousness as he spoke.

Eve seemed to be pained.

"Have you slept better?" she asked, solicitous.

"I have slept so well that there's probably something wrong with me," said he. "Heavy sleep is a symptom of several dangerous diseases."

"I'm glad you've had a good night," she began, again ignoring his maladroit flippancy, "because I want to talk to you."

"Darling," he responded. "Pour out my tea for me, will you? Then I shall be equal to any strain. I trust that you also passed a fair night, madam. You look tremendously fit."

Visions of Lady Massulam flitted through his mind, but he decided that Eve, seriously pouring out tea for him under the lamp in the morning twilight of the pale bedroom, could not be matched by either Lady Massulam or anybody else. No, he could not conceive a Lady Massulam pouring out early tea; the Lady Massulams could only pour out afternoon tea—a job easier to do with grace and satisfaction.

"I have not slept a wink all night," said Eve primly. "But I was determined that nothing should induce me to disturb you."

"Yes?" Mr. Prohack encouraged her, sipping the first glorious sip.

"Well, will you believe me that Sissie slipped out last night after dinner without saying a word to me or any one, and that she didn't come back and hasn't come back? I sat up for her till three o'clock—I telephoned to Charlie, but no! he'd seen nothing of her."

"Did you telephone to Ozzie?"

"Telephone to Ozzie, my poor boy! Of course I didn't. I wouldn't have Ozzie know for anything. Besides, he isn't on the telephone at his flat."

"That's a good reason for not telephoning, anyway," said Mr. Prohack.

"But did you ever hear of such a thing? The truth is, you've spoilt that child."

"I may have spoilt the child," Mr. Prohack admitted. "But I have heard of such a thing. I seem to remember that in the dear dead days of dancing studios, something similar occurred to your daughter."

"Yes, but we did know where she was."

"You didn't. I did," Mr. Prohack corrected her.

"Do you want me to cry?" Eve demanded suddenly.

"Yes," said Mr. Prohack. "I love to see you cry."

Eve pursed her lips and wrinkled her brows and gazed at the window, performing great feats of self-control under extreme provocation to lose her temper.

"What do you propose to do?" she asked with formality.

"Wait till the girl comes back," said Mr. Prohack.

"Arthur! I really cannot understand how you can take a thing like this so casually! No, I really can't!"

"Neither can I!" Mr. Prohack admitted, quite truthfully.

He saw that he ought to have been gravely upset by Sissie'a prank and he was merely amused. "Effect of too much sleep, no doubt," he added.

Eve walked about the room.

"I pretended to Machin this morning that Sissie had told me that she was sleeping out, and that I had forgotten to tell Machin. It's a good thing we haven't engaged lady's maids yet. I can trust Machin. I know she didn't believe me this morning, but I can trust her. You see, after Sissie's strange behaviour these last few days.... One doesn't know what to think. And there's something else. Every morning for the last three or four weeks Sissie's gone out somewhere, for an hour or two, quite regularly. And where she went I've never been able to find out. Of course with a girl like her it doesn't do to ask too direct questions.... Ah! I should like to have seen my mother in my place. I know what she'd have done!"

"What would your mother have done? She always seemed to me to be a fairly harmless creature."

"Yes, to you!... Do you think we ought to inform the police!"

"No!"

"I'm so glad. The necklace and Sissie coming on top of each other! No, it would be too much!"

"It never rains but it pours, does it?" observed Mr. Prohack.

"But what are we to do?"

"Just what your mother would have done. Your mother would have argued like this: Either Sissie is staying away against her will or she is staying away of her own accord. If the former, it means an accident, and we are bound to hear shortly from one of the hospitals. If the latter, we can only sit tight. Your mother had a vigorous mind and that is how she would have looked at things."

"I never know how to take you, Arthur," said Mrs. Prohack, and went on: "And what makes it all the more incomprehensible IA that yesterday afternoon Sissie went with me to Jay's to see about the wedding-dress."

"But why should that make it all the more incomprehensible?"

"Don't you think it does, somehow? I do."

"Did she giggle at Jay's?"

"Oh, no! Except once. Yes, I think she giggled once. That was when the fitter said she hoped we should give them plenty of time, because most customers rushed them so. I remember thinking how queer it was that Sissie should laugh so much at a perfectly simple remark like that. Oh! Arthur!"

"Now, my child," said Mr. Prohack firmly. "Don't get into your head that Sissie has gone off hers. Yesterday you thought for quite half an hour that I was suffering from incipient lunacy. Let that suffice you for the present. Be philosophical. The source of tranquillity is within. Remember that, and remind me of it too, because I'm apt to forget it.... We can do nothing at the moment. I will now get up, and I warn you that I shall want a large breakfast and you to pour out my coffee and read the interesting bits out of The Daily Picture to me."

At eleven o'clock of the morning the status quo was still maintaining itself within the noble mansion at Manchester Square. Mr. Prohack, washed, dressed, and amply fed, was pretending to be very busy with correspondence in his study, but he was in fact much more busy with Eve than with the correspondence. She came in to him every few minutes, and each time needed more delicate handling. After one visit Mr. Prohack had an idea. He transferred the key from the inside to the outside of the door. At the next visit Eve presented an ultimatum. She said that Mr. Prohack must positively do something about his daughter. Mr. Prohack replied that he would telephone to his solicitors: a project which happily commended itself to Eve, though what his solicitors could do except charge a fee Mr. Prohack could not imagine.

"You wait here," said he persuasively.

He then left the room and silently locked the door on Eve. It was a monstrous act, but Mr. Prohack had slept too well and was too fully inspired by the instinct of initiative. He hurried downstairs, ignoring Brool, who was contemplating the grandeur of the entrance hall, snatched his overcoat, hat, and umbrella from the seventeenth-century panelled cupboard in which these articles were kept, and slipped away into the Square, before Brool could even open the door for him. As he fled he glanced up at the windows of his study, fearful lest Eve might have divined his purpose to abandon her and, catching sight of him in flight, might begin making noises on the locked door. But Eve had not divined his purpose.

Mr. Prohack walked straight to Bruton Street, where Oswald Morfey's Japanese flat was situated. Mr. Prohack had never seen this flat, though his wife and daughter had been invited to it for tea—and had returned therefrom with excited accounts of its exquisite uniqueness. He had decided that his duty was to inform Ozzie of the mysterious disappearance of Sissie as quickly as possible; and, as Ozzie's theatrical day was not supposed to begin until noon, he hoped to catch him before his departure to the beck and call of the mighty Asprey Chown.

The number in Bruton Street indicated a tall, thin house with four bell-pushes and four narrow brass-plates on its door-jamb. The deceitful edifice looked at a distance just like its neighbours, but, as the array on the door-jamb showed, it had ceased to be what it seemed, the home of a respectable Victorian family in easy circumstances, and had become a Georgian warren for people who could reconcile themselves to a common staircase provided only they might engrave a sound West End address on their notepaper. The front-door was open, disclosing the reassuring fact that the hall and staircase were at any rate carpeted. Mr. Prohack rang the bell attached to Ozzie's name, waited, rang again, waited, and then marched upstairs. Perhaps Ozzie was shaving. Not being accustomed to the organisation of tenements in fashionable quarters, Mr. Prohack was unaware that during certain hours of the day he was entitled to ring the housekeeper's bell, on the opposite door-jamb, and to summon help from the basement.

As he mounted it the staircase grew stuffier and stuffier, but the condition of the staircarpet improved. Mr. Prohack hated the place, and at once determined to fight powerfully against Sissie's declared intention of starting married life in her husband's bachelor-flat, for the sake of economy. He would force the pair, if necessary, to accept from him a flat rent-free, or he would even purchase for them one of those bijou residences of which he had heard tell. He little dreamed that this very house had once been described as a bijou residence. The third floor landing was terribly small and dark, and Mr. Prohack could scarcely decipher the name of his future son-in-law on the shabby name-plate.

"This den would be dear at elevenpence three farthings a year," said he to himself, and was annoyed because for months he had been picturing the elegant Oswald as the inhabitant of something orientally and impeccably luxurious, and he wondered that his women, as a rule so critical, had breathed no word of the flat's deplorable approaches.

He rang the bell, and the bell made a violent and horrid sound, which could scarcely fail to be heard throughout the remainder of the house. No answer! Ozzie had gone. He descended the stairs, and on the second-floor landing saw an old lady putting down a mat in front of an open door. The old lady's hair was in curl-papers.

"I suppose," he ventured, raising his hat. "I suppose you don't happen to know whether Mr. Morfey has gone out?"

The old lady scanned him before replying.

"He can't be gone out," she answered. "He's just been sweeping his floor enough to wake the dead."

"Sweeping his floor!" exclaimed Mr. Prohack, shocked, thunderstruck. "I understood these were service flats."

"So they are—in a way, but the housekeeper never gets up to this floor before half past twelve; so it can't be the housekeeper. Besides, she's gone out for me."

"Thank you," said Mr. Prohack, and remounted the staircase. His blood was up. He would know the worst about the elegant Oswald, even if he had to beat the door down. He was, however, saved from this extreme measure, for when he aimlessly pushed against Oswald's door it opened.

He beheld a narrow passage, which in the matter of its decoration certainly did present a Japanese aspect to Mr. Prohack, who, however, had never been to Japan. Two doors gave off the obscure corridor. One of these doors was open, and in the doorway could be seen the latter half of a woman and the forward half of a carpet-brush. She was evidently brushing the carpet of a room and gradually coming out of the room and into the passage. She wore a large blue pinafore apron, and she was so absorbed in her business that the advent of Mr. Prohack passed quite unnoticed by her. Mr. Prohack waited. More of the woman appeared, and at last the whole of her. She felt, rather than saw, the presence of a man at the entrance, and she looked up, transfixed. A deep blush travelled over all her features.

"How clever of you!" she said, with a fairly successful effort to be calm.

"Good morning, my child," said Mr. Prohack, with a similar and equally successful effort. "So you're cleaning Mr. Morfey's flat for him."

"Yes. And not before it needed it. Do come in and shut the door." Mr. Prohack obeyed, and Sissie shed her pinafore apron. "Now we're quite private. I think you'd better kiss me. I may as well tell you that I'm fearfully happy—much more so than I expected to be at first."

Mr. Prohack again obeyed, and when he kissed his daughter he had an almost entirely new sensation. The girl was far more interesting to him than she had ever been. Her blush thrilled him.

"You might care to glance at that," said Sissie, with an affectation of carelessness, indicating a longish, narrowish piece of paper covered with characters in red and black, which had been affixed to the wall of the passage with two pins. "We put it there—at least I did—to save trouble."

Mr. Prohack scanned the document. It began: "This is to certify—" and it was signed by a "Registrar of births, deaths, and marriages."

"Yesterday, eh?" he ejaculated.

"Yes. Yesterday, at two o'clock. Not at St George's and not at St Nicodemus's.... Well, you can say what you like, dad—"

"I'm not aware of having said anything yet," Mr. Prohack put in.

"You can say what you like, but what did you expect me to do? It was necessary to bring home to some people that this is the twentieth century, not the nineteenth, and I think I've done it. And anyway what are you going to do about it? Did you seriously suppose that I—I—was going through all the orange-blossom rigmarole, voice that breathed o'er Eden, fully choral, red carpet on the pavement, flowers, photographers, vicar, vestry, Daily Picture, reception, congratulations, rice, old shoes, going-away dress, 'Be kind to her, Ozzie.' Not much! And I don't think. They say that girls love it and insist on it. Well, I don't, and I know some others who don't, too. I think it's simply barbaric, worse than a public funeral. Why, to my mind it's Central African; and that's all there is to it. So there!" She laughed.

"Well," said Mr. Prohaek, holding his hat in his hand. "I'm a tolerably two-faced person myself, but for sheer heartless duplicity I give you the palm. You can beat me. Has it occurred to you that this dodge of yours will cost you about fifty per cent of the wedding presents you might otherwise have had?"

"It has," said Sissie. "That was one reason why we tried the dodge. Nothing is more horrible than about fifty per cent of the wedding presents that brides get in these days. And we've had the two finest presents anybody could wish for."

"Oh?"

"Yes, Ozzie gave me Ozzie, and I gave him me."

"I suppose the idea was yours?"

"Of course. Didn't I tell you yesterday that Ozzie's only function at my wedding was to be indispensable. He was very much afraid at first when I started on the scheme, but he soon warmed up to it. I'll give him credit for seeing that secrecy was the only thing. If we'd announced it beforehand, we should have been bound to be beaten. You see that yourself, don't you, dearest? And after all, it's our affair and nobody else's."

"That's just where you're wrong," said Mr. Prohack grandly. "A marriage, even yours, is an affair of the State's. It concerns society. It is full of reactions on society. And society has been very wise to invest it with solemnity—and a certain grotesque quality. All solemnities are a bit grotesque, and so they ought to be. All solemnities ought to produce self-consciousness in the performers. As things are, you'll be ten years in convincing yourself that you're really a married woman, and till the day of your death, and afterwards, society will have an instinctive feeling that there's something fishy about you, or about Ozzie. And it's your own fault."

"Oh, dad! What a fraud you are!" And the girl smiled. "You know perfectly well that if you'd been in my place, and had had the pluck—which you wouldn't have had—you'd have done the same."

"I should," Mr. Prohack immediately admitted. "Because I always want to be smarter than other people. It's a cheap ambition. But I should have been wrong. And I'm exceedingly angry with you and I'm suffering from a sense of outrage, and I should not be at all surprised if all is over between us. The thing amounts to a scandal, and the worst of it is that no satisfactory explanation of it can ever be given to the world. If your Ozzie is up, produce him, and I'll talk to him as he's never been talked to before. He's the elder, he's a man, and he's the most to blame."

"Take your overcoat off," said Sissie laughing and kissing him again. "And don't you dare to say a word to Ozzie. Besides, he isn't in. He's gone off to business. He always goes at eleven-thirty punctually."

There was a pause.

"Well," said Mr. Prohack. "All I wish to state is that if you had a feather handy, you could knock me down with it."

"I can see all over your face," Sissie retorted, "that you're so pleased and relieved you don't know what to do with yourself."

Mr. Prohack perfunctorily denied this, but it was true. His relief that the wedding lay behind instead of in front of him was immense, and his spirits rose even higher than they had been when he first woke up. He loathed all ceremonies, and the prospect of having to escort an orange-blossom-laden young woman in an automobile to a fashionable church, and up the aisle thereof, and raise his voice therein, and make a present of her to some one else, and breathe sugary nothings to a thousand gapers at a starchy reception,—this prospect had increasingly become a nightmare to him. Often had he dwelt on it in a condition resembling panic. And now he felt genuinely grateful to his inexcusable daughter for her shameless effrontery. He desired greatly to do something very handsome indeed for her and her excellent tame husband.

"Step in and see my home," she said.

The home consisted of two rooms, one of them a bedroom and the other a sitting-room, together with a small bathroom that was as dark and dank as a cell of the Spanish Inquisition, and another apartment which he took for a cupboard, but which Sissie authoritatively informed him was a kitchen. The two principal rooms were beyond question beautifully Japanese in the matter of pictures, prints and cabinets—not otherwise. They showed much taste; they were unusual and stimulating and jolly and refined; but Mr. Prohack did not fancy that he personally could have lived in them with any striking success. The lack of space, of light, and of air outweighed all considerations of charm and originality; the upper staircase alone would have ruined any flat for Mr. Prohack.

"Isn't it lovely!" Sissie encouraged him.

"Yes, it is," he said feebly. "Got any servants yet?"

"Oh! We can't have servants. No room for them to sleep, and I couldn't stand charwomen. You see, it's a service flat, so there's really nothing to do."

"So I noticed when I came in," said Mr. Prohack. "And I suppose you intend to eat at restaurants. Or do they send up meals from the cellar?"

"We shan't go to restaurants," Sissie replied. "You may be sure of that. Too expensive for us. And I don't count much on the cookery downstairs. No! I shall do the cooking in a chaffing-dish—here it is, you see. I've been taking lessons in chafing-dish cookery every day for weeks, and it's awfully amusing, it is really. And it's much better than ordinary cooking, and cheaper too. Ozzie loves it."

Mr. Prohack was touched, and more than ever determined to "be generous in the grand manner and start the simple-minded couple in married life on a scale befitting the general situation.

"You'll soon be clearing out of this place, I expect," he began cautiously.

"Clearing out!" Sissie repeated. "Why should we? We've got all we need. We haven't the slightest intention of trying to live as you live. Ozzie's very prudent, I'm glad to say, and so am I. We're going to save hard for a few years, and then we shall see how things are."

"But you can't possibly stay on living in a place like this!" Mr. Prohack protested, smiling diplomatically to soften the effect of his words.

"Who can't?"

"You can't."

"But when you say me, do you mean your daughter or Ozzie's wife? Ozzie's lived here for years, and he's given lots of parties here—tea-parties, of course."

Mr. Prohack paused, perceiving that he had put himself in the wrong.

"This place is perfectly respectable," Sissie continued, "and supposing you hadn't got all that money from America or somewhere," she persisted, "would you have said that I couldn't 'possibly go on living in a place like this?'" She actually imitated his superior fatherly tone. "You'd have been only too pleased to see me living in a place like this."

Mr. Prohack raised both arms on high.

"All right," said the young spouse, absurdly proud of her position. "I'll let you off with your life this time, and you can drop your arms again. But if anybody had told me that you would come here and make a noise like a plutocrat I wouldn't have believed it. Still, I'm frightfully fond of you and I know you'd do anything for me, and you're nearly as much of a darling as Ozzie, but you mustn't be a rich man when you call on me here. I couldn't bear it twice."

"I retire in disorder, closely pursued by the victorious enemy," said Mr. Prohack. And in so saying he accurately described the situation. He had been more than defeated—he had been exquisitely snubbed. And yet the singular creature was quite pleased. He looked at the young girl, no longer his and no longer a girl either, set in the midst of a japanned and lacquered room that so resembled Ozzie in its daintiness; he saw the decision on her brow, the charm in her eyes, and the elegance in her figure and dress, and he came near to bursting with pride. "She's got character enough to beat even me," he reflected contentedly, thus exhibiting an ingenuousness happily rare among fathers of brilliant daughters. And even the glimpse of the cupboard kitchen, where the washing-up after a chafing-dish breakfast for two had obviously not yet been accomplished—even this touch seemed only to intensify the moral and physical splendour of his child in her bridal setting.

"At the same time," he added to the admission of defeat, "I seem to have a sort of idea that lately you've been carrying on rather like a plutocrat's daughter."

"That was only my last fling," she replied, quite unperturbed.

"I see," said Mr. Prohack musingly. "Now as regards my wedding present to you. Am I permitted to offer any gift, or is it forbidden? Of course with all my millions I couldn't hope to rival the gift which Ozzie gave you, but I might come in a pretty fair second, mightn't I?"

"Dad," said she. "I must leave all that to your good taste. I'm sure that it won't let you make any attack on our independence."

"Supposing that I were to find some capital for Ozzie to start in business for himself as a theatrical manager? He must know a good deal about the job by this time."

Sissie shook her delicious head.

"No, that would be plutocratic. And you see I've only just married Ozzie. I don't know anything about him yet. When I do, I shall come and talk to you. While you're waiting I wish you'd give me some crockery. One breakfast cup isn't quite enough for two people, after the first day. I saw a set of things in a shop in Oxford Street for L1. 19. 6 which I should love to have.... What's happened to the mater? Is she in a great state about me? Hadn't you better run off and put her out of her misery?"

He went, thoughtful.



III

He was considerably dashed on his return home, to find the door of his study still locked on the outside. The gesture which on his leaving the room seemed so natural, brilliant and excusable, now presented itself to him as the act of a coarse-minded idiot. He hesitated to unlock the door, but of course he had to unlock it. Eve eat as if at the stake, sublime.

"Arthur, why do you play these tricks on me—and especially when we are in such trouble?"

Why did he, indeed?

"I merely didn't want you to run after me," said he. "I made sure of course that you'd ring the bell at once and have the door opened."

"Did you imagine for a moment that I would let any of the servants know that you'd locked me in a room? No! You couldn't have imagined that. I've too much respect for your reputation in this house to do such a thing, and you ought to know it."

"My child," said Mr. Prohack, once again amazed at Eve's extraordinary gift for putting him in the wrong, and for making him still more wrong when he was wrong. "This is the second time this morning that I've had to surrender to overwhelming force. Name your own terms of peace. But let me tell you in extenuation that I've discovered your offspring. The fact is, I got her in one."

"Where is she?" Eve asked, not eagerly, rather negligently, for she was now more distressed about her husband's behaviour than about Sissie.

"At Ozzie's." As soon as he had uttered the words Mr. Prohack saw his wife's interest fly back from himself to their daughter.

"What's she doing at Ozzie's?"

"Well, she's living with him. They were married yesterday. They thought they'd save you and me and themselves a lot of trouble.... But, look here, my child, it's not a tragedy. What's the matter with you?"

Eve's face was a mask of catastrophe. She did not cry. The affair went too deep for tears.

"I suppose I shall have to forgive Sissie—some day; but I've never been so insulted in my life. Never! And never shall I forget it! And I've no doubt that you and Sissie treated it all as a great piece of fun. You would!"

The poor lady had gone as pale as ivory. Mr. Prohack was astonished—he even felt hurt—that he had not seen the thing from Eve's point of view earlier. Emphatically it did amount to an insult for Eve, to say naught of the immense desolating disappointment to her. And yet Sissie, princess among daughters, had not shown by a single inflection of her voice that she had any sympathy with her mother, or any genuine appreciation of what the secret marriage would mean to her. Youth was incredibly cruel; and age too, in the shape of Mr. Prohack himself, had not been much less cruel.

"Something's happened about that necklace since you left," said Eve, in a dull, even voice.

"Oh! What?"

"I don't know. But I saw Mr. Crewd the detective drive up to the house at a great pace. Then Brool came and knocked here, and as I didn't care to have to tell him that the door was locked, I kept quiet and he went away again. Mr. Crewd went away too. I saw him drive away."

Mr. Prohack said nothing audible, but to himself he said: "She actually choked off her curiosity about the necklace so as not to give me away! There could never have been another woman like her in the whole history of human self-control! She's prodigious!"

And then he wondered what could have happened in regard to the necklace. He foresaw more trouble there. And the splendour of the morning had faded. An appalling silence descended upon the whole house. To escape from its sinister spell Mr. Prohack departed and sought the seclusion of his secondary club, which he had not entered for a very long time. (He dared not face the lively amenities of his principal club.) He pretended, at the secondary club, that he had never ceased to frequent the place regularly, and to that end he put on a nonchalant air; but he was somewhat disconcerted to find, from the demeanour of his acquaintances there, that he positively had not been missed to any appreciable extent. He decided that the club was a dreary haunt, and could not understand why he had never before perceived its dreariness. The members seemed to be scarcely alive; and in particular they seemed to have conspired together to behave and talk as though humanity consisted of only one sex,—their own. Mr. Prohack, worried though he was by a too acute realisation of the fact that humanity did indeed consist of two sexes, despised the lot of them. And yet simultaneously the weaker part of him envied them, and he fully admitted, in the abstract, that something might convincingly be said in favour of monasteries. It was a most strange experience.

After a desolating lunch of excellent dishes, perfect coffee which left a taste in his mouth, and a fine cigar which he threw away before it was half finished, he abandoned the club and strolled in the direction of Manchester Square. But he lacked the courage to go into the noble mansion, and feebly and aimlessly proceeded northward until he arrived at Marylebone Road and saw the great historic crimson building of Madame Tussaud's Waxworks. His mood was such that he actually, in a wild and melancholy caprice, paid money to enter this building and enquired at once for the room known as the Chamber of Horrors.... When he emerged his gloom had reached the fantastic, hysteric, or giggling stage, and his conception of the all-embracingness of London was immensely enlarged.

"Miss Sissie and Mr. Morfey are with Mrs. Prohack, sir," said Brool, in a quite ordinary tone, taking the hat and coat of his returned master in the hall of the noble mansion.

Mr. Prohack started.

"Give me back my hat and coat," said he. "Tell your mistress that I may not be in for dinner." And he fled.

He could not have assisted at the terrible interview between Eve and the erring daughter who had inveigled her own betrothed into a premature marriage. Sissie at any rate had pluck, and she must also have had an enormous moral domination over Ozzie to have succeeded in forcing him to join her in a tragic scene. What a honeymoon! To what a pass had society come! Mr. Prohack drove straight to the Monument, and paid more money for the privilege of climbing it. He next visited the Tower. The day seemed to consist of twenty-four thousand hours. He dined at the Trocadero Restaurant, solitary at a table under the shadow of the bass fiddle of the orchestra; and finally he patronised Maskelyne and Cook's entertainment, and witnessed the dissipation of solid young women into air. He reached home, as it was humorously called, at ten thirty.

"Mrs. Prohack has retired for the night, sir," said Brool, who never permitted his employers merely to go to bed, "and wishes not to be disturbed."

"Thank God!" breathed Mr. Prohack.

"Yes, sir," said Brool, dutifully acquiescent.



IV

The next morning Eve behaved to her husband exactly as if nothing untoward had happened. She kissed and was kissed. She exhibited sweetness without gaiety, and a general curiosity without interest. She said not a word concerning the visit of Sissie and Ozzie. She expressed the hope that Mr. Prohack had had a pleasant evening and slept well. Her anxiety to be agreeable to Mr. Prohack was touching,—it was angelic. To the physical eye all was as usual, but Mr. Prohack was aware that in a single night she had built a high and unscalable wall between him and her; a wall which he could see through and which he could kiss through, but which debarred him utterly from her. And yet what sin had he committed against her, save the peccadillo of locking her for an hour or two in a comfortable room? It was Sissie, not he, who had committed the sin. He wanted to point this out to Eve, but he appreciated the entire futility of doing so and therefore refrained. About eleven o'clock Eve knocked at and opened his study door.

"May I come in—or am I disturbing you?" she asked brightly.

"Don't be a silly goose," said Mr. Prohack, whose rising temper—he hated angels—was drowning his tact. Smiling as though he had thrown her a compliment, Eve came in, and shut the door.

"I've just received this," she said. "It came by messenger." And she handed him a letter signed with the name of Crewd, the private detective. The letter ran: "Madam, I beg to inform you that I have just ascertained that the driver of taxi No. 5437 has left at New Scotland Yard a pearl necklace which he found in his vehicle. He states that he drove a lady and gentleman from your house to Waterloo Station on the evening of your reception, but can give no description of them. I mention the matter pro forma, but do not anticipate that it can interest you as the police authorities at New Scotland Yard declare the pearls to be false. Yours obediently.... P.S. I called upon you in order to communicate the above facts yesterday, but you were not at home."

Mr. Prohack turned a little pale, and his voice trembled as he said, looking up from the letter:

"I wonder who the thief was. Anyhow, women are staggering. Here some woman—I'm sure it was the woman and not the man—picks up a necklace from the floor of one of your drawing-rooms, well knowing it not to be her own, hides it, makes off with it, and then is careless enough to leave it in a taxi! Did you ever hear of such a thing?"

"But that wasn't my necklace, Arthur!" said Eve.

"Of course it was your necklace," said Mr. Prohack.

"Do you mean to tell me—" Eve began, and it was a new Eve.

"Of course I do!" said Mr. Prohack, who had now thoroughly subdued his temper in the determination to bring to a head that trouble about the necklace and end it for ever. He was continuing his remarks when the wall suddenly fell down with an unimaginable crash. Eve said nothing, but the soundless crash deafened Mr. Prohack. Nevertheless the mere fact that Sissie's wedding lay behind and not before him, helped him somewhat to keep his spirits and his nerve.

"I will never forgive you, Arthur!" said Eve with the most solemn and terrible candour. She no longer played a part; she was her formidable self, utterly unmasked and savagely expressive without any regard to consequences. Mr. Prohack saw that he was engaged in a mortal duel, with the buttons off the deadly foils.

"Of course you won't," said he, gathering himself heroically together, and superbly assuming a calm which he did not in the least feel. "Of course you won't, because there is nothing to forgive. On the contrary, you owe me your thanks. I never deceived you. I never told you the pearls were genuine. Indeed I beg to remind you that I once told you positively that I would never buy you a pearl necklace,—don't you remember? You thought they were genuine, and you have had just as much pleasure out of them as if they had been genuine. You were always careless with your jewellery. Think how I should have suffered if I had watched you every day being careless with a rope of genuine pearls! I should have had no peace of mind. I should have been obliged to reproach you, and as you can't bear to be reproached you would have picked quarrels with me. Further, you have lost nothing in prestige, for the reason that all our friends and acquaintances have naturally assumed that the pearls were genuine because they were your pearls and you were the wife of a rich man. A woman whose husband's financial position is not high and secure is bound to wear real pearls because people will assume that her pearls are false. But a woman like yourself can wear any pinchbeak pearls with impunity because people assume that her pearls are genuine. In your case there could be no advantage whatever in genuine pearls. To buy them would be equivalent to throwing money in the street. Now, as it is, I have saved money over the pearls, and therefore interest on money, though I did buy you the very finest procurable imitations! And think, my child, how relieved you are now,—oh, yes! you are, so don't pretend the contrary: I can deceive you, but you can't deceive me. You have no grievance whatever. You have had many hours of innocent satisfaction in your false jewels, and nobody is any the worse. Indeed my surpassing wisdom in the choice of a necklace has saved you from all further worry about the loss of the necklace, because it simply doesn't matter either one way or the other, and I say I defy you to stand there and tell me to my face that you have any grievance at all."

Mr. Prohack paused for a reply, and he got it.

"I will never forgive you as long as I live," said Eve. "Let us say no more about it. What time is that awful lunch that you've arranged with that dreadful Bishop man? And what would you like me to wear, please?" In an instant she had rebuilt the wall, higher than ever.

Mr. Prohack, always through the wall, took her in his arms and kissed her. But he might as well have kissed a woman in a trance. All that could be said was that Eve submitted to his embrace, and her attitude was another brilliant illustration of the fact that the most powerful oriental tyrants can be defied by their weakest slaves, provided that the weakest slaves know how to do it.

"You are splendid!" said Mr. Prohack, admiringly, conscious anew of his passion for her and full of trust in the virtue of his passion to knock down the wall sooner or later. "But you are a very naughty and ungrateful creature, and you must be punished. I will now proceed to punish you. We have much to do before the lunch. Go and get ready, and simply put on all the clothes that have cost the most money. They are the clothes fittest for your punishment."

Three-quarters of an hour later, when Mr. Prohack had telephoned and sent a confirmatory note by hand to his bank, Carthew drove them away southwards, and the car stopped in front of the establishment of a very celebrated firm of jewellers near Piccadilly.

"Come along," said Mr. Prohack, descending to the pavement, and drew after him a moving marble statue, richly attired. They entered the glittering shop, and were immediately encountered by an expectant salesman who had the gifts of wearing a frock-coat as though he had been born in it, and of reading the hearts of men. That salesman saw in a flash that big business was afoot.

"First of all," said Mr. Prohack. "Here is my card, so that we may know where we stand."

The salesman read the card and was suitably impressed, but his conviction that big business was afoot seemed now to be a little shaken.

"May I venture to hope that the missing necklace has been found, sir?" said the salesman smoothly. "We've all been greatly interested in the newspaper story."

"That is beside the point," said Mr. Prohack. "I've come simply to buy a pearl necklace."

"I beg pardon, sir. Certainly. Will you have the goodness to step this way."

They were next in a private room off the shop; and the sole items of furniture were three elegant chairs, a table with a glass top, and a colossal safe. Another salesman entered the room with bows, and keys were produced, and the two salesmen between them swung back the majestic dark green doors of the safe. In another minute various pearl necklaces were lying on the table. The spectacle would have dazzled a connoisseur in pearls; but Mr. Prohack was not a connoisseur; he was not even interested in pearls, and saw on the table naught but a monotonous array of pleasing gewgaws, to his eye differing one from another only in size. He was, however, actuated by a high moral purpose, which uplifted him and enabled him to listen with dignity to the technical eulogies given by the experts. Eve of course behaved with impeccable correctness, hiding the existence of the wall from everybody except Mr. Prohack, but forcing Mr. Prohack to behold the wall all the time.

When he had reached a state of complete bewilderment regarding the respective merits of the necklaces, Mr. Prohack judged the moment ripe for proceeding to business. With his own hands he clasped a necklace round his wife's neck, and demanded:

"What is the price of this one?"

"Eight hundred and fifty pounds," answered the principal expert, who seemed to recognise every necklace at sight as a shepherd recognises every sheep in his flock.

"Do you think this would suit you, my dear?" asked Mr. Prohack.

"I think so," replied Eve politely.

"Well, I'm not so sure," said Mr. Prohack, reflectively. "What about this one?" And he picked up and tried upon Eve another and a larger necklace.

"That," said the original expert, "is two thousand four hundred guineas."

"It seems cheap," said Mr. Prohack carelessly. "But there's something about the gradation that I don't quite like. What about this one?"

Eve opened her mouth, as if about to speak, but she did not speak. The wall, which had trembled for a few seconds, regained its monumental solidity.

"Five thousand guineas," said the expert of the third necklace.

"Hm!" commented Mr. Prohack, removing the gewgaw. "Yes. Not so bad. And yet—"

"That necklace," the expert announced with a mien from which all deference had vanished, "is one of the most perfect we have. The pearls have, if I may so express it, a homogeneity not often arrived at in any necklace. They are not very large of course—"

"Quite so," Mr. Prohack stopped him, selecting a fourth necklace.

"Yes," the expert admitted, his deference returning. "That one is undoubtedly superior. Let me see, we have not yet exactly valued it, but I think we could put it in at ten thousand guineas—perhaps pounds. I should have to consult one of the partners."

"It is scarcely," said Mr. Prohack, surveying the trinket judicially on his wife's neck, "scarcely the necklace of my dreams,—not that I would say a word against it.... Ah!" And he pounced suddenly, with an air of delighted surprise, upon a fifth necklace, the queen of necklaces.

"My dear, try this one. Try this one. I didn't notice it before. Somehow it takes my fancy, and as I shall obviously see much more of your necklace than you will, I should like my taste to be consulted."

As he fastened the catch of the thing upon Eve's delicious nape, he could feel that she was trembling. He surveyed the dazzling string. She also surveyed it, fascinated, spellbound. Even Mr. Prohack began to perceive that the reputation and value of fine pearls might perhaps be not entirely unmerited in the world.

"Sixteen thousand five hundred," said the expert.

"Pounds or guineas?" Mr. Prohack blandly enquired.

"Well, sir, shall we say pounds?"

"I think I will take it," said Mr. Prohack with undiminished blandness. "No, my dear, don't take it off. Don't take it off."

"Arthur!" Eve breathed, seeming to expire in a kind of agonised protest.

"May I have a few minutes' private conversation with my wife?" Mr. Prohack suggested. "Could you leave us?" One expert glanced at the other awkwardly.

"Pardon my lack of savoir vivre," said Mr. Prohack. "Of course you cannot possibly leave us alone with all these valuables. Never mind! We will call again."

The principal expert rose sublimely to the great height of the occasion. He had a courageous mind and was moreover well acquainted with the fantastic folly of allowing customers to call again. Within his experience of some thirty years he had not met half a dozen exceptions to the rule that customers who called again, if ever they did call, called in a mood of hard and miserly sanity which for the purposes of the jewellery business was sickeningly inferior to their original mood.

"Please, please, Mr. Prohack!" said he, with grand deprecation, and departed out of the room with his fellow.

No sooner had they gone than the wall sank. It did not tumble with a crash; it most gently subsided.

"Arthur!" Eve exclaimed, with a curious uncertainty of voice. "Are you mad?"

"Yes," said Mr. Prohack.

"Well," said she. "If you think I shall walk about London with sixteen thousand five hundred pounds round my neck you're mistaken."

"But I insist! You were a martyr and our marriage was ruined because I didn't give you real pearls. I intend you shall have real pearls."

"But not these," said Eve. "It's too much. It's a fortune."

"I am aware of that," Mr. Prohack agreed. "But what is sixteen thousand five hundred pounds to me?"

"Truly I couldn't, darling," Eve wheedled.

"I am not your darling," said Mr. Prohack. "How can I be your darling when you're never going to forgive me? Look here. I'll let you choose another necklace, but only on the condition that you forgive all my alleged transgressions, past, present and to come."

She kissed him.

"You can have the one at five thousand guineas," said Mr. Prohack. "Nothing less. That is my ultimatum. Put it on. Put it on, quick! Or I may change my mind."

He recalled the experts who, when they heard the grave news, smiled bravely, and looked upon Eve as upon a woman whose like they might never see again.

"My wife will wear the necklace at once," said Mr. Prohack. "Pen and ink, please." He wrote a cheque. "My car is outside. Perhaps you will send some one up to my bank immediately and cash this. We will wait. I have warned the bank. There will be no delay. The case can be delivered at my house. You can make out the receipt and usual guarantee while we're waiting." And so it occurred as he had ordained.

"Would you care for us to arrange for the insurance? We undertake to do it as cheaply as anybody," the expert suggested, later.

Mr. Prohack was startled, for in his inexperience he had not thought of such complications.

"I was just going to suggest it," he answered placidly.

"I feel quite queer," said Eve, as she fingered the necklace, in the car, when all formalities were accomplished and they had left the cave of Aladdin.

"And well you may, my child," said Mr. Prohack. "The interest on the price of that necklace would about pay the salary of a member of Parliament or even of a professional cricketer. And remember that whenever you wear the thing you are in danger of being waylaid, brutally attacked, and robbed."

"I wish you wouldn't be silly," Eve murmured. "I do hope I shan't seem self-conscious at the lunch."

"We haven't reached the lunch yet," Mr. Prohack replied. "We must go and buy a safe first. There's no safe worth twopence in the house, and a really safe safe is essential. And I want it to be clearly understood that I shall keep the key of that safe. We aren't playing at necklaces now. Life is earnest."

And when they had bought a safe and were once more in the car, he said, examining her impartially: "After all, at a distance of four feet it doesn't look nearly so grand as the one that's lying at Scotland Yard—I gave thirty pounds for that one."



CHAPTER XXII

MR. PROHACK'S TRIUMPH

"And where is your charming daughter?" asked Mr. Softly Bishop so gently of Eve, when he had greeted her, and quite incidentally Mr. Prohack, in the entrance hall of the Grand Babylon Hotel. He was alone—no sign of Miss Fancy.

"Sissie?" said Eve calmly. "I haven't the slightest idea."

"But I included her in my invitations—and Mr. Morfey too."

Mr. Prohack was taken aback, foreseeing the most troublesome complications; and he glanced at Eve as if for guidance and support. He was nearly ready to wish that after all Sissie had not gone and got married secretly and prematurely. Eve, however, seemed quite undisturbed, though she offered him neither guidance nor support.

"Surely," said Mr. Prohack hesitatingly, "surely you didn't mention Sissie in your letter to me!"

"Naturally I didn't, my dear fellow," answered Mr. Bishop. "I wrote to her separately, knowing the position taken up by the modern young lady. And she telephoned me yesterday afternoon that she and Morfey would be delighted to come."

"Then if you know so much about the modern young lady," said Eve, with bright and perfect self-possession, "you wouldn't expect my daughter to arrive with her parents, would you?"

Mr. Softly Bishop laughed.

"You're only putting off the evil moment," said Mr. Prohack in the silence of his mind to Eve, and similarly he said to Mr. Softly Bishop:

"I do wish you wouldn't call me 'my dear fellow.' True, I come to your lunch, but I'm not your dear fellow and I never will be."

"I invited your son also, Prohack," continued Mr. Bishop. "Together with Miss Winstock or Warburton—she appears to have two names—to make a pair, to make a pair you understand. But unfortunately he's been suddenly called out of town on the most urgent business." As he uttered these last words Mr. Bishop glanced in a peculiar manner partly at his nose and partly at Mr. Prohack; it was a singular feat of glancing, and Mr. Prohack uncomfortably wondered what it meant, for Charles lay continually on Mr. Prohack's chest, and at the slightest provocation Charles would lie more heavily than usual.

"Am I right in assuming that the necklace affair is satisfactorily settled?" Mr. Softly Bishop enquired, his spectacles gleaming and blinking at the adornment of Eve's neck.

"You are," said Eve. "But it wouldn't be advisable for you to be too curious about details."

Her aplomb, her sangfroid, astounded Mr. Prohack—and relieved him. With an admirable ease she went on to congratulate their host upon his engagement, covering him with petals of flattery and good wishes. Mr. Prohack could scarcely recognise his wife, and he was not sure that he liked her new worldiness quite as much as her old ingenuous and sometimes inarticulate simplicity. At any rate she was a changed woman. He steadied himself, however, by a pertinent reflection: she was always a changed woman.

Then Sissie and Ozzie appeared, looking as though they had been married for years. Mr. Prohack's heart began to beat. Ignoring Mr. Softly Bishop, Sissie embraced her mother with prim affectionateness, and Eve surveyed her daughter with affectionate solicitude. Mr. Prohack felt that he would never know what had passed between these two on the previous day, for they were a pair of sphinxes when they chose, and he was too proud to encourage confidences from Ozzie. Whatever it might have been it was now evidently buried deep, and the common life, after a terrible pause, had resumed.

"How do you do, Miss Prohack," said Mr. Softly Bishop, greeting. "So glad you could come."

Mr. Prohack suspected that his cheeks were turning pale, and was ashamed of himself. Even Sissie, for all her young, hard confidence, wavered.

But Eve stepped in.

"Don't you know, Mr. Bishop?—No, of course you don't. We ought to have told you. My daughter is now Mrs. Morfey. You see in our family we all have such a horror of the conventional wedding and reception and formal honeymoon and so on, that we decided the marriage should be strictly private, with no announcements of any kind. I really think you are the first to know. One thing I've always liked about actresses is that in the afternoon you can read of them getting married that day and then go and see them play the same evening. It seems to me so sensible. And as we were all of the same opinion at our house, especially Sissie and her father, there was no difficulty."

"Upon my word," said Mr. Softly Bishop shaking hands with Ozzie. "I believe I shall follow your example."

Mr. Prohack sank into a chair.

"I feel rather faint," he said. "Bishop, do you think we might have a cocktail or so?"

"My dear fellow, how thoughtless of me! Of course! Waiter! Waiter!" As Mr. Bishop swung round in the direction of waiters Eve turned in alarm to Mr. Prohack. Mr. Prohack with much deliberation winked at her, and she drew back. "Yes," he murmured. "You'll be the death of me one day, and then you'll be sorry."

"I don't think a cocktail is at all a good thing for you, dad," Sissie calmly observed.

The arrival of Miss Fancy provided a distraction more agreeable than Mr. Prohack thought possible; he positively welcomed the slim, angular blonde, for she put an end to a situation which, prolonged another moment, would have resulted in a severe general constraint.

"You're late, my dear," said Mr. Softly Bishop, firmly.

The girl's steely blue-eyed glance shot out at the greeting, but seemed to drop off flatly from Mr. Bishop's adamantine spectacles like a bullet from Bessemer armour.

"Am I?" she replied uncertainly, in her semi-American accent. "Where's the ladies' cloakroom of this place?"

"I'll show you," said Mr. Bishop, with no compromise.

The encounter was of the smallest, but it made Mr. Prohack suspect that perhaps Mr. Bishop was not after all going into the great warfare of matrimony blindly or without munitions.

"I've taken the opportunity to tell Miss Fancy that she will be the only unmarried woman, at my lunch," said Mr. Bishop amusingly, when he returned from piloting his beloved. A neat fellow, beyond question!

Miss Fancy had apparently to re-dress herself, judging from the length of her absence. The cocktails, however, beguiled the suspense.

"Is this for me?" she asked, picking up a full glass when she came back.

"No, my dear," said Mr. Bishop. "It isn't. We will go in to lunch." And they went in to lunch, leaving unconsumed the cocktail which the abstemious and spartan Sissie had declined to drink.



II

"I suppose you've been to see the Twelve and Thirteen," said Eve, in her new grand, gracious manner to Miss Fancy, when the party was seated at a round, richly-flowered table specially reserved by Mr. Softly Bishop on the Embankment front of the restaurant, and the hors d'oeuvre had begun to circulate on the white cloth, which was as crowded as the gold room.

"I'm afraid I haven't," muttered Miss Fancy weakly but with due refinement. The expression of fear was the right expression. Eve had put the generally brazen woman in a fright at the first effort. And the worst was that Miss Fancy did not even know what the Twelve and Thirteen was—or were. At the opening of her debut at what she imagined to be the great, yet exclusive, fashionable world, Miss Fancy was failing. Of what use to be perfectly dressed and jewelled, to speak with a sometimes carefully-corrected accent, to sit at the best table in the London restaurant most famous in the United States, to be affianced to the cleverest fellow she had ever struck, if the wonderful and famous hostess, Mrs. Prohack, whose desirable presence was due only to Softly's powerful influence in high circles, could floor her at the very outset of the conversation? It is a fact that Miss Fancy would have given the emerald ring off her left first-finger to be able to answer back. All Miss Fancy could do was to smite Mr. Softly Bishop with a homicidal glance for that he had not in advance put her wise about something called the Twelve and Thirteen. It is also a fact that Miss Fancy would have perished sooner than say to Mrs. Prohack the simple words: "I haven't the slightest idea what the Twelve and Thirteen are." Eve did not disguise her impression that Miss Fancy's lapse was very strange and disturbing.

"I suppose you've seen the new version of the 'Sacre du Prin-temps,' Miss Fancy," said Mrs. Oswald Morfey, that exceedingly modern and self-possessed young married lady.

"Not yet," said Miss Fancy, and foolishly added: "We were thinking of going to-night."

"There won't be any more performances this season," said Ozzie, that prince of authorities on the universe of entertainment.

And in this way the affair continued between the four, while Mr. Softly Bishop, abandoning his beloved to her fate, chatted murmuringly with Mr. Prohack about the Oil Market, as to which of course Mr. Prohack was the prince of authorities. Mrs. Prohack and her daughter and son-in-law ranged at ease over all the arts without exception, save the one art—that of musical comedy—in which Miss Fancy was versed. Mr. Prohack was amazed at the skilled cruelty of his women. He wanted to say to Miss Fancy: "Don't you believe it! My wife is only a rather nice ordinary housekeeping sort of little woman, and as for my daughter, she cooks her husband's meals—and jolly badly, I bet." He ought to have been pleased at the discomfiture of Miss Fancy, whom he detested and despised; but he was not; he yearned to succour her; he even began to like her.

And not Eve and Sissie alone amazed him. Oswald amazed him. Oswald had changed. His black silk stock had gone the way of his ribboned eye-glass; his hair was arranged differently; he closely resembled an average plain man,—he, the unique Ozzie! With all his faults, he had previously been both good-natured and negligent, but his expression was now one of sternness and of resolute endeavour. Sissie had already metamorphosed him. Even now he was obediently following her lead and her mood. Mr. Prohack's women had evidently determined to revenge themselves for being asked to meet Miss Fancy at lunch, and Ozzie had been set on to assist them. Further, Mr. Prohack noticed that Sissie was eyeing her mother's necklace with a reprehending stare. The next instant he found himself the target of the same stare. The girl was accusing him of folly, while questioning Ozzie's definition of the difference between Georgian and neo-Georgian verse. The girl had apparently become the censor of society at large.

Mysterious cross-currents ran over the table in all directions. Mr. Prohack looked around the noisy restaurant packed with tables, and wondered whether cross-currents were running invisibly over all the tables, and what was the secret force of fashionable fleeting convention which enabled women with brains far inferior to his own to use it effectively for the fighting of sanguinary battles.

At last, when Miss Fancy had been beaten into silence and the other three were carrying on a brilliant high-browed conversation over the corpse of her up-to-dateness, Mr. Prohack's nerves reached the point at which he could tolerate the tragic spectacle no more, and he burst out vulgarly, in a man-in-the-street vein, chopping off the brilliant conversation as with a chopper:

"Now, Miss Fancy, tell us something about yourself."

The common-sounding phrase seemed to be a magic formula endowed with the power to break an awful spell. Miss Fancy gathered herself together, forgot that she had been defeated, and inaugurated a new battle. She began to tell the table not something, but almost everything, about herself, and it soon became apparent that she was no ordinary woman. She had never had a set-back; in innumerable conversational duels she had always given the neat and deadly retort, and she had never been worsted, save by base combinations deliberately engineered against her—generally by women, whom as a sex she despised even more than men. Her sincere belief that no biographical detail concerning Miss Fancy was too small to be uninteresting to the public amounted to a religious creed; and her memory for details was miraculous. She recalled the exact total of the takings at any given performance in which she was prominent in any city of the United States, and she could also give long extracts from the favourable criticisms of countless important American newspapers,—by a singular coincidence only unimportant newspapers had ever mingled blame with their praise of her achievements. She regarded herself with detachment as a remarkable phenomenon, and therefore she could impersonally describe her career without any of the ordinary restraints—just as a shopman might clothe or unclothe a model in his window. Thus she could display her heart and its history quite unreservedly,—did they not belong to the public?

The astounded table learnt that Miss Fancy was illustrious in the press of the United States as having been engaged to be married more often than any other actress. Yet she had never got as far as the altar, though once she had reached the church-door—only to be swept away from it by a cyclone which unhappily finished off the bridegroom. (What grey and tedious existences Eve and Sissie had led!) Her penultimate engagement had been to the late Silas Angmering.

"Something told me I should never be his wife," she said vivaciously. "You know the feeling we women have. And I wasn't much surprised to hear of his death. I'd refused Silas eight times; then in the end I promised to marry him by a certain date. He wouldn't take No, poor dear! Well, he was a gentleman anyway. Of course it was no more than right that he should put me down in his will, but not every man would have done. In fact it never happened to me before. Wasn't it strange I should have that feeling about never being his wife?"

She glanced eagerly at Mr. Prohack and Mr. Prohack's women, and there was a pause, in which Mr. Softly Bishop said, affectionately regarding his nose:

"Well, my dear, you'll be my wife, you'll find," and he uttered this observation in a sharp tone of conviction that made a quite disturbing impression on the whole company, and not least on Mr. Prohack, who kept asking himself more and more insistently:

"Why is Softly Bishop marrying Miss Fancy, and why is Miss Fancy marrying Softly Bishop?"

Mr. Prohack was interrupted in his private enquiry into this enigma by a very unconventional nudge from Sissie, who silently directed his attention to Eve, who seemingly wanted it.

"Your friend seems anxious to speak to you," murmured Eve, in a low, rather roguish voice.

'His friend' was Lady Massulam, who was just concluding a solitary lunch at a near table; he had not noticed her, being still sadly remiss in the business of existing fully in a fashionable restaurant. Lady Massulam's eyes confirmed Eve's statement.

"I'm sure Miss Fancy will excuse you for a moment," said Eve.

"Oh! Please!" implored Miss Fancy, grandly.

Mr. Prohack self-consciously carried his lankness and his big head across to Lady Massulam's table. She looked up at him with a composed but romantic smile. That is to say that Mr. Prohack deemed it romantic; and he leaned over the table and over Lady Massulam in a manner romantic to match.

"I'm just going off," said she.

Simple words, from a portly and mature lady—yet for Mr. Prohack they were charged with all sorts of delicious secondary significances.

"What is the difference between her and Eve?" he asked himself, and then replied to the question in a flash of inspiration: "I am romantic to her, and I am not romantic to Eve." He liked this ingenious explanation.

"I wanted to tell you," said she gravely, with beautiful melancholy, "Charles is flambe. He is done in. I cannot help him. He will not let me; but if I see him to-night when he returns to town I shall send him to you. He is very young, very difficult, but I shall insist that he goes to you."

"How kind you are!" said Mr. Prohack, touched.

Lady Massulam rose, shook hands, seemed to blush, and departed. An interview as brief as it had been strange! Mr. Prohack was thrilled, not at all by the announcement of Charlie's danger, perhaps humiliation, but by the attitude of Lady Massulam. He had his plans for Charlie. He had no plans affecting Lady Massulam.

Mr. Softly Bishop's luncheon had developed during the short absence of Mr. Prohack. It's splendour, great from the first, had increased; if tables ever do groan, which is perhaps doubtful, the table was certainly groaning; Mr. Softly Bishop was just dismissing, with bland and negligent approval, the major domo of the restaurant, with whom, like all truly important personages, he appeared to be on intimate terms. But the chief development of the luncheon disclosed itself in the conversation. Mr. Softly Bishop had now taken charge of the talk and was expatiating to a hushed and crushed audience his plans for a starring world-tour for his future wife, who listened to them with genuine admiration on her violet-tinted face.

"Eliza won't be in it with me when I come back," she exclaimed suddenly, with deep conviction, with anticipatory bliss, with a kind of rancorous ferocity.

Mr. Prohack understood. Miss Fancy was uncompromisingly jealous of her half-sister's renown. To outdo that renown was the main object of her life, and Mr. Softly Bishop's claim on her lay in the fact that he had shown her how to accomplish her end and was taking charge of the arrangements. Mr. Softly Bishop was her trainer and her manager; he had dazzled her by the variety and ingenuity of his resourceful schemes; and his power over her was based on a continual implied menace that if she did not strictly obey all his behests she would fail to realise her supreme desire.

And when Mr. Softly Bishop gradually drew Ozzie into a technical tete-a-tete, Mr. Prohack understood further why Ozzie had been invited to the feast. Upon certain branches of Mr. Bishop's theatrical schemes Ozzie was an acknowledged expert, and Mr. Bishop was obtaining, for the price of a luncheon, the fruity knowledge and wisdom acquired by Ozzie during long years of close attention to business.

For Mr. Prohack it was an enthralling scene. The luncheon closed gorgeously upon the finest cigars and cigarettes, the finest coffee, and the finest liqueurs that the unique establishment could provide. Sissie refused every allurement except coffee, and Miss Fancy was permitted nothing but coffee.

"Do not forget your throat, my dear," Mr. Softly Bishop authoritatively interjected into Miss Fancy's circumstantial recital of the expensiveness of the bouquets which had been hurled at her in the New National Theatre at Washington.

"And by the way," (looking at his watch), "do not forget the appointment with the elocutionist."

"But aren't you coming with me?" demanded Miss Fancy alarmed. Already she was learning the habit of helplessness—so attractive to men and so useful to them.

These remarks broke up the luncheon party, which all the guests assured the deprecating host had been perfectly delightful, with the implied addition that it had also constituted the crown and summit of their careers. Eve and Sissie were prodigious in superlatives to such an extent that Mr. Prohack began to fear for Mr. Softly Bishop's capacity to assimilate the cruder forms of flattery. His fear, however, was unnecessary. When the host and his beloved departed Miss Fancy was still recounting tit-bits of her biography.

"But I'll tell you the rest another time," she cried from the moving car.

She had emphatically won the second battle. From the first blow she had never even looked like losing. And she had shown no mercy, quite properly following the maxim that war is war. Eve and Sissie seemed to rise with difficulty to their knees, after the ruthless adversary, tired of standing on their prostrate form, had scornfully walked away.



III

"Well!" sighed Mrs. Prohack, with the maximum of expressiveness, glancing at her daughter as one woman of the world at another. They were lingering, as it were convalescent after the severe attack and defeat, in the foyer of the hotel.

"Well!" sighed Sissie, flattered by the glance, and firmly taking her place in the fabric of society. "Well, father, we always knew you had some queer friends, but really these were the limit! And the extravagance of the thing! That luncheon must have cost at least twenty pounds,—and I do believe he had special flowers, too. When I think of the waste of money and time that goes on daily in places like these, I wonder there's any England left. It ought to be stopped by law."

"My child," said Mr. Prohack. "I observe with approbation that you are beginning to sit up and take notice. Centuries already divide you from the innocent creature who used to devote her days and nights to the teaching of dancing to persons who had no conception of the seriousness of life. I agree with your general criticism, but let us remember that all this wickedness does not date from the day before yesterday. It's been flourishing for some thousands of years, and all prophecies about it being over-taken by Nemesis have proved false. Still, I'm glad you've turned over a new leaf."

Sissie discreetly but unmistakably tossed her young head.

"Oswald, dearest," said she. "It's time you were off."

"It is," Ozzie agreed, and off he went, to resume the serious struggle for existence,—he who until quite recently had followed the great theatrical convention that though space may be a reality, time is not.

"I don't mind the extravagance, because after all it's good for trade," said Eve. "What I—"

"Mother darling!" Sissie protested. "Where do you get these extraordinary ideas from about luxury being good for trade? Surely you ought to know—"

"I daresay I ought to know all sorts of things I don't know," said Eve with dignity. "But there's one thing I do know, and that is that the style of those two dreadful people was absolutely the worst I've ever met. The way that woman gabbled—and all about herself; and what an accent, and the way she held her fork!"

"Lady," said Mr. Prohack. "Don't be angry because she beat you."

"Beat me!"

"Yes. Beat you. Both of you. You talked her to a standstill at first; but you couldn't keep it up. Then she began and she talked you to a standstill, and she could keep it up. She left you for all practical purposes dead on the field, my tigresses. And I'm very sorry for her," he added.

"Dad," said Sissie sternly. "Why do you always try to be so clever with us? You know as well as we do that she's a creature, and that there's nothing to be said for her at all."

"Nothing to be said for her!" Mr. Prohack smiled tolerantly. "Why she was the star of the universe for Silas Angmering, the founder of our fortunes. She was the finest woman he'd ever met. And Angmering was a clever fellow, let me tell you. You call her a creature. Yes, the creature of destiny, like all of us, except of course you. I beg to inform you that Miss Fancy went out of this hotel a victim, an unconscious victim, but a victim. She is going to be exploited. Mr. Softly Bishop, my co-heir, will run her for all she is worth. He will make a lot of money out of her. He will make her work as she has never worked before. He will put a value on all her talents, for his own ends. And he will deprive her of most of her accustomed pleasures. In fifteen years there'll be nothing left of Miss Fancy except an exhausted wreck with a spurious reputation, but Mr. Softly Bishop will still be in his prime and in the full enjoyment of life, and he will spend on himself the riches that she has made for him and allow her about sixpence a week; and the most tragic and terrible thing of all is that she will think she owes everything to him! No! If I was capable of weeping, I should have wept at the pathos of the spectacle of Miss Fancy as she left us just now unconscious of her fate and revelling in the most absurd illusions. That poor defenceless woman, who has had the misfortune not to please you, is heading straight for a life-long martyrdom." Mr. Prohack ceased impressively.

"And serve her right!" said Eve. "I've met cats in my time, but—" And Eve also ceased.

"And I am not sure," added Mr. Prohack, still impressively. "And I am not sure that the ingenuous and excellent Oswald Morfey is not heading straight in the same direction." And he gazed at his adored daughter, who exhibited a faint flush, and then laughed lightly. "Yes," said Mr. Prohack, "you are very smart, my girl. If you had shown violence you would have made a sad mistake. That you should laugh with such a brilliant imitation of naturalness gives me hopes of you. Let us seek Carthew and the car. Mr. Bishop's luncheon, though I admit it was exceedingly painful, has, I trust, not been without its useful lessons to us, and I do not regret it. For myself I admit it has taught me that even the finest and most agreeable women, such as those with whom I have been careful to sourround myself in my domestic existence, are monsters of cruelty. Not that I care."

"I've arranged with mamma that you shall come to dinner to-night," said Sissie. "No formality, please."

"Mayn't your mother wear her pearls?" asked Mr. Prohack.

"I hope you noticed, Arthur," said Eve with triumphant satisfaction, "how your Miss Fancy was careful to keep off the subject of jewels."

"Mother's pearls," said Sissie primly, "are mother's affair."

Mr. Prohack did not feel at all happy.

"And yet," he asked himself. "What have I done? I am perfectly innocent."



IV

"I never in all my life," said Sissie, "saw you eat so much, dad. And I think it's a great compliment to my cooking. In fact I'm bursting with modest pride."

"Well," replied Mr. Prohack, who had undoubtedly eaten rather too much, "take it how you like. I do believe I could do with a bit more of this stuff that imitates an omelette but obviously isn't one."

"Oh! But there isn't any more!" said Sissie, somewhat dashed.

"No more! Good heavens! Then have you got some cheese, or anything of that sort?"

"No. I don't keep cheese in the place. You see, the smell of it in these little flats—"

"Any bread? Anything at all?"

"I'm afraid we've finished up pretty nearly all there was, except Ozzie's egg for breakfast to-morrow morning."

"This is serious," observed Mr. Prohack, tapping enquiringly the superficies of his digestive apparatus.

"Arthur!" cried Eve. "Why are you such a tease to-night? You're only trying to make the child feel awkward. You know you've had quite enough. And I'm sure it was all very cleverly cooked—considering. You'll be ill in the middle of the night if you keep on, and then I shall have to get up and look after you, as usual." Eve had the air of defending her daughter, but something, some reserve in her voice, showed that she was defending, not her daughter, but merely and generally the whole race of house-wives against the whole race of consuming and hypercritical males; she was even defending the Eve who had provided much-criticised meals in the distant past. Such was her skill that she could do this while implying, so subtly yet so effectively, that Sissie, the wicked, shameless, mamma-scorning bride, was by no means forgiven in the secret heart of the mother.

"You are doubtless right, lady," Mr. Prohack agreed. "You always could judge better than I could myself when I had had enough, and what would be the ultimate consequences of my eating. And as for your lessons in manners, what an ill-bred lout I was before I met you, and what an impossible person I should have been had you not taken me in hand night and day for all these years! It isn't that I'm worse than the average husband; it is merely that wives are the sole repositories of the civilising influence. Were it not for them we should still be tearing steaks to pieces with our fingers. I daresay I have eaten enough—anyhow I've had far more than anybody else—and even if I hadn't, it would not be at all nice of me not to pretend that I hadn't. And after all, if the worst comes to the worst, I can always have a slice of cold beef and a glass of beer when I get home, can't I?"

Sissie, though blushing ever so little, maintained an excellent front. She certainly looked dainty and charming,—more specifically so than she had ever looked; indeed, utterly the young bride. She was in morning dress, to comply with her own edict against formality, and also to mark her new, enthusiastic disapproval of the modern craze for luxurious display; but it was a delightful, if inexpensive, dress. She had taken considerable trouble over the family dinner, devising, concocting, cooking, and presiding over it from beginning to end, and being consistently bright, wise, able, and resourceful throughout—an apostle of chafing-dish cookery determined to prove that chafing-dish cookery combined efficiency, toothsomeness and economy to a degree never before known. And she had neatly pointed out more than once that waste was impossible under her system and that, servants being dispensed with, the great originating cause of waste had indeed been radically removed. She had not informed her guests of the precise cost in money of the unprecedentedly cheap and nourishing meal, but she had come near to doing so; and she would surely have indicated that there had been neither too much nor too little, but just amply sufficient, had not her absurd and contrarious father displayed a not uncharacteristic lack of tact at the closing stage of the ingenious collation.

Moreover, she seemed, despite her generous build, to have somehow fitted herself to the small size of the flat. She did not dwarf it, as clumsier women are apt to dwarf their tiny homes in the centre of London. On the contrary she gave to it the illusion of spaciousness; and beyond question she had in a surprisingly short time transformed it from a bachelor's flat into a conjugal nest, cushiony, flowery, knicknacky, and perilously seductive to the eye without being too reassuring to the limbs.

Mr. Prohack was accepting a cigarette, having been told that Ozzie never smoked cigars, when there was a great ring which filled the entire flat as the last trump may be expected to fill the entire earth, and Mr. Prohack dropped the cigarette, muttering:

"I think I'll smoke that afterwards."

"Good gracious!" the flat mistress exclaimed. "I wonder who that can be. Just go and see, Ozzie, darling." And she looked at Ozzie as if to say: "I hope it isn't one of your indiscreet bachelor friends."

Ozzie hastened obediently out.

"It may be Charlie," ventured Eve. "Wouldn't it be nice if he called?"

"Yes, wouldn't it?" Sissie agreed. "I did 'phone him up to try to get him to dinner, but naturally he was away for the day. He's always as invisible as a millionaire nowadays. Besides I feel somehow this place would be too much, too humble, for the mighty Charles. Buckingham Palace would be more in his line. But we can't all be speculators and profiteers."

"Sissie!" protested their mother mildly.

After mysterious and intriguing noises at the front-door had finished, and the front-door had made the whole flat vibrate to its bang, Ozzie puffed into the room with three packages, the two smaller being piled upon the third.

"They're addressed to you," said Ozzie to his father-in-law.

"Did you give the man anything?" Sissie asked quickly.

"No, it was Carthew and the parlourmaid—Machin, is her name?"

"Oh!" said Sissie, apparently relieved.

"Now let us see," said Mr. Prohack, starting at once upon the packages.

"Don't waste that string, dad," Sissie enjoined him anxiously.

"Eh? What do you say?" murmured Mr. Prohack, carefully cutting string on all sides of all packages, and tearing first-rate brown paper into useless strips. He produced from the packages four bottles of champagne of four different brands, a quantity of pate de foie gras, a jar of caviare, and several bunches of grapes that must have been grown under the most unnatural and costly conditions.

"What ever's this?" Sissie demanded, uneasily.

"Arthur!" said Eve. "Whatever's the meaning of this?"

"It has a deep significance," replied Mr. Prohack. "The only fault I have to find with it is that it has arrived rather late—and yet perhaps, like Bluecher, not too late. You can call it a wedding present if you choose, daughter. Or if you choose you can call it simply caviare, pate de foie gras, grapes and champagne. I really have not had the courage to give you a wedding present," he continued, "knowing how particular you are about ostentation. But I thought if I sent something along that we could all join in consuming instantly, I couldn't possibly do any harm."

"We haven't any champagne glasses," said Sissie coldly.

"Champagne glasses, child! You ought never to drink champagne out of champagne glasses. Tumblers are the only thing for champagne. Some tumblers, Ozzie. And a tin-opener. You must have a tin-opener. I feel convinced you have a tin-opener. Upon my soul, Eve, I was right after all. I am hungry, but my hunger is nothing to my thirst. I'm beginning to suspect that I must be the average sensual man."

"Arthur!" Eve warned him. "If you eat any of that caviare you're bound to be ill."

"Not if I mix it with pate de foi gras, my pet. It is notorious that they are mutual antidotes, especially when followed by the grape cure. Now, ladies and Ozzie, don't exasperate me by being coy. Fall to! Ingurgitate. Ozzie, be a man for a change." Mr. Prohack seemed to intimidate everybody to such an extent that Sissie herself went off to secure tumblers.

"But why are you opening another bottle, father?" she asked in alarm on her return. "This one isn't half empty."

"We shall try all four brands," said Mr. Prohack.

"But what a waste!"

"Know, my child," said Mr. Prohack, with marked and solemn sententiousness. "Know that in an elaborately organised society, waste has its moral uses. Know further that nothing is more contrary to the truth than the proverb that enough is as good as a feast. Know still further that though the habit of wastefulness may have its dangers, it is not nearly so dangerous as the habit of self-righteousness, or as the habit of nearness, both of which contract the soul until it's more like a prune than a plum. Be a plum, my child, and let who will be a prune."

It was at this moment that Eve showed her true greatness.

"Come along, Sissie," said she, after an assaying glance at her husband and another at her daughter. "Let's humour him. It isn't often he's in such good spirits, is it?"

Sissie's face cleared, and with a wisdom really beyond her years she accepted the situation, the insult, the reproof, the lesson. As for Mr. Prohack, he felt happier, more gay, than he had felt all day,—not as the effect of champagne and caviare, but as the effect of the realisation of his prodigious sagacity in having foreseen that Sissie's hospitality would be what it had been. He was glad also that his daughter had displayed commonsense, and he began to admire her again, and in proportion as she perceived that he was admiring her, so she consciously increased her charm; for the fact was, she was very young, very impressionable, very anxious to do the right thing.

"Have another glass, Ozzie," urged Mr. Prohack.

Ozzie looked at his powerful bride for guidance.

"Do have another glass, you darling old silly," said the bride.

"There will be no need to open the other two bottles," said Mr. Prohack. "Indeed, I need only have opened one.... I shall probably call here again soon."

At this point there was another ring at the front-door.

"So you've condescended!" Sissie greeted Charles when Ozzie brought him into the room, and then, catching her father's eye and being anxious to rest secure in the paternal admiration, she added: "Anyway it was very decent of you to come. I know how busy you are."

Charles raised his eyebrows at this astonishing piece of sisterliness. His mother kissed him fondly, having received from Mr. Prohack during the day the delicatest, filmiest hint that perhaps Charlie was not at the moment fabulously prospering.

"Your father is very gay to-night," said she, gazing at Charlie as though she read into the recesses of his soul and could see a martyrdom there, though in fact she could not penetrate any further than the boy's eyeballs.

"I beg you to note," Mr. Prohack remarked. "That as the glasses have only been filled once, and three of them are at least a quarter full, only the equivalent of two and a half champagne glasses has actually been drunk by four people, which will not explain much gaiety. If the old gentleman is gay, and he does not assert that he is not, the true reason lies in either the caviare or the pate de foie gras, or in his crystal conscience. Have a drink, Charles?"