When she came back to the parlour (astoundingly natty in a muslin apron of Georgiana’s) to announce supper, she made no reference to the concert which she was interrupting.  He abandoned the concertina gently, caressing it into its leather shell.  He was full to the brim with kindliness.  It seemed to him that his life with Helen was commencing all over again.  Then he followed the indications of his nose, which already for some minutes had been prophesying to him that in the concoction of the supper Helen had surpassed herself.

And she had.  There was kidney ...  No, not in an omelette, but impaled on a skewer.  A novel species of kidney, a particularity in kidneys!

“Where didst pick this up, lass?” he asked.

“It’s the kidneys of that rabbit that you’ve bought for to-morrow,” said she.

Now, he had no affection for rabbit as an article of diet, and he had only bought the rabbit because the rabbit happened to be going past his door (in the hands of a hawker) that morning.  His perfunctory purchase of it showed how he had lost interest in life and meals since Helen’s departure.  And lo! she had transformed a minor part of it into something wondrous, luscious, and unforgettable.  Ah, she was Helen!  And she was his!

“I’ve asked Georgiana to make up my bed,” Helen said, after the divine repast.

“I’ll tell ye what I’ll do,” he said, in an ecstasy of generosity, “I’ll buy thee a piano, lass, and we’ll put it in th’ parlour against the wall where them books are now.”

She kept silence—­a silence which vaguely disturbed him.

So that he added:  “And if ye’re bent on a bigger house, there’s one up at Park-road, above th’ Park, semi-detached—­at least, it’s the end of a terrace—­as I can get for thirty pounds a year.”

“My dearest uncle,” she said, in a firm, even voice, “what are you talking about?  Didn’t I tell you when I came in that I had settled to go to Canada?  I thought it was all decided.  Surely you don’t think I’m going to live in a poky house in Park-road—­the very street where my school was, too!  I perfectly understand that you won’t buy Wilbraham Hall.  That’s all right.  I shan’t pout.  I hate women who pout.  We can’t agree, but we’re friends.  You do what you like with your money, and I do what I like with myself.  I had a sort of idea I would try to make you beautifully comfortable just for the last time before I left England, and that’s why I’m staying.  I do hope you didn’t imagine anything else, uncle.  There!”

She kissed him, not as a niece, but as a wise, experienced nurse might have kissed a little boy.  For she too, in her way, reckoned herself somewhat of a diplomatist and a descendant of Machiavelli.  She had thought:  “It’s a funny thing if I can’t bring him to his knees with a tasty supper—­just to make it clear to him what he’ll lose if he loses me.”

James Ollerenshaw had no sleep that night.  And Helen had but little.