‘Not take Phoebe!’ cried the other under her breath, seeming to hear around her the ghosts of words which had but just passed between her and Phoebe—­’and what on earth are you going to do with her?’

He led her away towards the edge of the little garden—­arguing, prophesying, laying down the law.

While he was thus engaged came Phoebe’s silver voice from the parlour: 

‘Is that you, John?  Supper’s ready.’

He and Miss Anna turned.

‘Hush, please!’ said Fenwick to his companion, finger on lip; and they entered.

‘You’ll have got the money from Mr. Morrison, John?’ said Phoebe, presently, when they were settled to their meal.

‘Aye,’ said Fenwick, ’that’s all right.  Phoebe, that’s a real pretty dress of yours.’

Soft colour rose in the wife’s cheeks.

‘I’m glad you like it,’ said Phoebe, soberly.  Then looking up—­

‘John—­don’t give Carrie that!—­it’ll make her sick.’

For Fenwick was stealthily feeding the baby beside him with morsels from his own plate.  The child’s face—­pink mouth and blue eyes, both wide open—­hung upon him in a fixed expectancy.

’She does like it so—­the little greedy puss!  It won’t do her any harm.’

But the mother persisted.  Then the child cried, and the father and mother wrangled over it, till Fenwick caught up the babe by Phoebe’s peremptory directions and carried it away upstairs.  At the door of the little parlour, while Phoebe was at his shoulder, wiping away the child’s tears and cooing to it, Fenwick suddenly turned his head and kissed his wife’s cheek, or rather her pretty ear, which presented itself.  Miss Anna, still at table, laughed discreetly behind their backs—­the laugh of the sweet-natured old maid.

When the child was asleep upstairs, Phoebe and the little servant cleared away while Fenwick and Miss Anna read the newspaper, and talked on generalities.  In this talk Phoebe had no share, and it might have been noticed by one who knew them well, that in his conversation with Miss Mason, Fenwick became another man.  He used tones and phrases that he either had never used, or used no longer, with Phoebe.  He showed himself, in fact, intellectually at ease, expansive, and, at times, amazingly arrogant.  For instance, in discussing a paragraph about the Academy in the London letter of the Westmoreland Gazette, he fired up and paced the room, haranguing his listener in a loud, eager voice.  Of course she knew—­every one knew—­that all the best men and all the coming forces were now outside the Academy.  Millais, Leighton, Watts—­spent talents, extinct volcanoes!—­Tadema a marvellous mechanic, without ideas!—­the landscape men, chaotic,—­no standard anywhere, no style.  On the other hand, Burne-Jones and the Grosvenor Gallery group—­ideas without drawing, without knowledge, feet and hands absurd, muscles anyhow.  While as for Whistler and the Impressionists—­a lot of maniacs, running a fad to death—­but clever—­by Jove!—­