plume his feathers over virtues which would have gladdened
the heart of Caesar or St. Paul; and anon, complete his own

portrait with one of those touches of pitilessrealism which
the satirist so often seeks in vain.

'Now, there's Dick,' he said, 'he's shrewd; he saw through me
the first time we met, and told me so - told me so to my

face, which I had the virtue to keep. I bear you no malice
for it, Dick; you were right; I am a humbug.'

You may fancy how Esther quailed at this new feature of the
meeting between her two idols.

And then, again, in a parenthesis:-
'That,' said Van Tromp, 'was when I had to paint those dirty

daubs of mine.'
And a little further on, laughingly said perhaps, but yet

with an air of truth:-
'I never had the slightest hesitation in sponging upon any

human creature.'
Thereupon Dick got up.

'I think perhaps,' he said, 'we had better all be thinking of
going to bed.' And he smiled with a feeble and deprecatory

smile.
'Not at all,' cried the Admiral, 'I know a trick worth two of

that. Puss here,' indicating his daughter, 'shall go to bed;
and you and I will keep it up till all's blue.'

Thereupon Esther arose in sullen glory. She had sat and
listened for two mortal hours while her idol defiled himself

and sneered away his godhead. One by one, her illusions had
departed. And now he wished to order her to bed in her own

house! now he called her Puss! now, even as he uttered the
words, toppling on his chair, he broke the stem of his

tobacco-pipe in three! Never did the sheep turn upon her
shearer with a more commanding front. Her voice was calm,

her enunciation a little slow, but perfectlydistinct, and
she stood before him as she spoke, in the simplest and most

maidenly attitude.
'No,' she said, 'Mr. Naseby will have the goodness to go home

at once, and you will go to bed.'
The broken fragments of pipe fell from the Admiral's fingers;

he seemed by his countenance to have lived too long in a
world unworthy of him; but it is an odd circumstance, he

attempted no reply, and sat thunderstruck, with open mouth.
Dick she motioned sharply towards the door, and he could only

obey her. In the porch, finding she was close behind him, he
ventured to pause and whisper, 'You have done right.'

'I have done as I pleased,' she said. 'Can he paint?'
'Many people like his paintings,' returned Dick, in stifled

tones; 'I never did; I never said I did,' he added, fiercely
defending himself before he was attacked.

'I ask you if he can paint. I will not be put off. CAN he
paint?' she repeated.

'No,' said Dick.
'Does he even like it?'

'Not now, I believe.'
'And he is drunk?' - she leaned upon the word with hatred.

'He has been drinking.'
'Go,' she said, and was turning to re-enter the house when

another thought arrested her. 'Meet me to-morrow morning at
the stile,' she said.

'I will,' replied Dick.
And then the door closed behind her, and Dick was alone in

the darkness. There was still a chink of light above the
sill, a warm, mild glow behind the window; the roof of the

cottage and some of the banks and hazels were defined in
denser darkness against the sky; but all else was formless,

breathless, and noiseless like the pit. Dick remained as she
had left him, standingsquarely upon one foot and resting

only on the toe of the other, and as he stood he listened
with his soul. The sound of a chair pushed sharply over the

floor startled his heart into his mouth; but the silence
which had thus been disturbed settled back again at once upon

the cottage and its vicinity. What took place during this
interval is a secret from the world of men; but when it was

over the voice of Esther spoke evenly and without
interruption for perhaps half a minute, and as soon as that

ceased heavy and uncertain footfalls crossed the parlour and
mounted lurching up the stairs. The girl had tamed her

father, Van Tromp had gone obediently to bed: so much was
obvious to the watcher in the road. And yet he still waited,

straining his ears, and with terror and sickness at his
heart; for if Esther had followed her father, if she had even

made one movement in this great conspiracy of men and nature
to be still, Dick must have had instant knowledge of it from

his station before the door; and if she had not moved, must
she not have fainted? or might she not be dead?

He could hear the cottage clock deliberatelymeasure out the
seconds; time stood still with him; an almost superstitious

terror took command of his faculties; at last, he could bear
no more, and, springing through the little garden in two

bounds, he put his face against the window. The blind, which
had not been drawn fully down, left an open chink about an

inch in height along the bottom of the glass, and the whole
parlour was thus exposed to Dick's investigation. Esther sat

upright at the table, her head resting on her hand, her eyes
fixed upon the candle. Her brows were slightly bent, her

mouth slightly open; her whole attitude so still and settled
that Dick could hardly fancy that she breathed. She had not

stirred at the sound of Dick's arrival. Soon after, making a
considerable disturbance amid the vast silence of the night,

the clock lifted up its voice, whined for a while like a
partridge, and then eleven times hooted like a cuckoo. Still

Esther continued immovable and gazed upon the candle.
Midnight followed, and then one of the morning; and still she

had not stirred, nor had Richard Naseby dared to quit the
window. And then, about half-past one, the candle she had

been thus intently watching flared up into a last blaze of
paper, and she leaped to her feet with an ejaculation, looked

about her once, blew out the light, turned round, and was
heard rapidly mounting the staircase in the dark.

Dick was left once more alone to darkness and to that dulled
and dogged state of mind when a man thinks that Misery must

now have done her worst, and is almost glad to think so. He
turned and walked slowly towards the stile; she had told him

no hour, and he was determined, whenever she came, that she
should find him waiting. As he got there the day began to

dawn, and he leaned over a hurdle and beheld the shadows flee
away. Up went the sun at last out of a bank of clouds that

were already disbanding in the east; a herald wind had
already sprung up to sweep the leafy earth and scatter the

congregated dewdrops. 'Alas!' thought Dick Naseby, 'how can
any other day come so distastefully to me?' He still wanted

his experience of the morrow.
CHAPTER VII - THE ELOPEMENT

IT was probably on the stroke of ten, and Dick had been half
asleep for some time against the bank, when Esther came up

the road carrying a bundle. Some kind of instinct, or
perhaps the distant light footfalls, recalled him, while she

was still a good way off, to the possession of his faculties,
and he half raised himself and blinked upon the world. It