in difficulties and could not afford to marry at the moment.  Spinks would have accepted this explanation as sufficient if it had not been for the peculiar behaviour of Rickman, and the very mysterious and agitating change in Flossie’s manner.  Old Rickets had returned to his awful solitude.  He absented himself entirely from the dinner-table.  When you met him on the stairs he was incommunicative and gloomy; and whatever you asked him to do he was too busy to do it.  His sole attention to poor Flossie was to take her for an occasional airing in the Park on Sunday afternoons.  Spinks had come across them there walking sadly side by side.  Flossie for propriety’s sake would be making a little conversation as he went by; but Rickman had always the shut mouth and steady eyes of invincible determination.

What was it that Razors was so determined about?  To marry Flossie?  Or not to marry her?  That was the question which agitated poor Spinks from morning till night, or rather from night till morning.  The worst of it was that the very nature of his woes compelled him as an honourable person to keep them to himself.

But there was no secret which could be long concealed from the eyes of that clever lady, Miss Roots; and she had contrived in the most delicate manner to convey to the unfortunate youth that he had her sympathy.  Spinks, bound by his honour, had used no words in divulging his agony; but their unspoken confidences had gone so far that Miss Roots at last permitted herself to say that it might be as well to find out whether “it was on or off.”

“But,” said the miserable Spinks, “would that be fair to Rickman?”

“I think so,” said the lady, with a smile that would have been sweet had it been rather less astute.  “Mind you, I’m not in their secrets; but I believe you really needn’t be afraid of that.”

“Yes.  But how in Heaven’s name am I to find out?  I can’t ask him, and I can’t ask her.”

“Why can’t you ask them?”

Spinks was unable to say why; but his delicacy shrank from either course as in some subtle way unfair.  Besides he distrusted Miss Roots’s counsel, for she had not been nice to Flossie.

“Oh Lord,” said Spinks, “what an orful mess I’m in!” He said it to himself; for he had resolved to talk no longer to Miss Roots.

He could have borne it better had not the terrible preoccupation of Rickman thrown Flossie on his hands.  In common decency he had to talk to her at the dinner-table.  But it was chivalry (surely) that drew him to her in the drawing-room afterwards.  She had to be protected (poor Flossie) from the shrewdness of Miss Roots, the impertinence of Mr. Soper, and the painful sympathy of the other boarders.  With the very best and noblest intentions in the world, Mr. Spinks descended nightly into that atmosphere of gloom, and there let loose his imperishable hilarity.