* * * * *

That night, after the girls had kissed them and gone to bed, John and Leonora remained alone together in the drawing-room.  The first fire of autumn was burning in the grate, and at the other end of the long room dark curtains were drawn across the French window.  Shaded candles lighted the grand piano, at which Leonora was seated, and a single gas jet illuminated the region of the hearth, where John, lounging almost at full length in a vast chair, read the newspaper; otherwise the room was in shadow.  John dropped the ‘Signal,’ which slid to the hearthrug with a rustle, and turned his head so that he could just see the left side of his wife’s face and her left hand as it moved over the keys of the piano.  She played with gentle monotony, and her playing seemed perfunctory, yet agreeable.  John watched the glinting of the four rings on her left hand, and the slow undulations of the drooping lace at her wrist.  He moved twice, and she knew he was about to speak.

‘I say, Leonora,’ he said in a confidential tone.

‘Yes, my dear,’ she responded, complying generously with his appeal for sympathy.  She continued to play for a moment, but even more softly; and then, as he kept silence, she revolved on the piano-stool and looked into his face.

‘What is it?’ she asked in a caressing voice, intensifying her femininity, forgiving him, excusing him, thinking and making him think what a good fellow he was, despite certain superficial faults.

‘You knew nothing of this Ryley business, did you?’ he murmured.

’Oh, no.  Are you sure there’s anything in it?  I don’t think there is for an instant.’  And she did not.  Even the placing of Milly’s hand on Fred Ryley’s shoulder in full sight of the street, even this she regarded only as the pretty indiscretion of a child.  ‘Oh! there’s nothing in it,’ she repeated.

’Well, there’s got to be nothing in it.  You must keep an eye on ’em.  I won’t have it.’

She leaned forward, and, resting her elbows on her knees, put her chin in her long hands.  Her bangles disappeared amid lace.

‘What’s the matter with Fred?’ said she.  ’He’s a relation; and you’ve said before now that he’s a good clerk,’

‘He’s a decent enough clerk.  But he’s not for our girls.’

‘If it’s only money——­’ she began.

‘Money!’ John cried.  ’He’ll have money.  Oh! he’ll have money right enough.  Look here, Nora, I’ve not told you before, but I’ll tell you now.  Uncle Meshach’s altered his will in favour of young Ryley.’

‘Oh!  Jack!’

John Stanway stood up, gazing at his wife with an air of martyrised virtue which said:  ’There! what do you think of that as a specimen of the worries which I keep to myself?’

She raised her eyebrows with a gesture of deep concern.  And all the time she was asking herself:  ’Why did Uncle Meshach alter his will?  Why did he do that?  He must have had some reason.’  This question troubled her far more than the blow to their expectations.