“Mother, dear,” she said, for Mrs. Melville had come back with the fish-pie, and was bidding her with an offended briskness to sit forward and eat her meal while it was hot, “they’re the loveliest things.  I can’t think what for I was so cross.”

“Neither can I. There’s so little bonny comes our way that I do think we might be grateful when we get a treat.”

“I’m sorry.  I can’t think what came over me.”

“Never mind.  But, you know, you’re sometimes terribly like your father.  You must fight against it.”

They sat down to supper, looking up from their food at the roses.

“Mother, the gas is awful bad for them.  Carbonic acid is just murderous to flowers.”

“I was thinking that myself.  It was well known that gas was bad for flowers even when I was young, though we didn’t talk about carbonic acid.  But if you don’t see them by gaslight you’ll never see them, for it’s dark by five.  They must fall faster than they would have done.”

“Och, no!  I’d rather you had the pleasure of them by day, and let the poor things last.  I must content myself with a look at them at breakfast.”

“Nonsense!  They’re your flowers, lassie.  But do you not think it would do if we brought in the two candles and turned out the gas?  It’ll be a bit dark, but it isn’t as if there were many bones in the fish-pie.”

And that is what they did.  It was a satisfactory arrangement, for then there was a bright soft light on the red and white petals, and a drapery of darkness about the mean walls of the room, and a thickening of the atmosphere which hid the archness on the older woman’s face, so that the girl dreamed untormented and without knowing that she dreamed.

“Ah, well!” sighed Mrs. Melville after a silence, with that air of irony which she was careful to impart to her sad remarks, as if she wanted to remove any impression that she respected the fate that had assailed her.  “I don’t know how many years it is since I sat down with roses on the table.”

“I never have before,” said Ellen.

II

It was indeed much more as the friend that Ellen wanted than as the declared lover he had intended to be that Yaverland came to Hume Park Square on Saturday in answer to the letter of thanks which, after the careful composition of eight drafts, she had sent him.  All week he had meant to ask her to marry him at the first possible moment.  By day, when the thought of her rushed in upon him like a sweet-smelling wind every time he lifted his mind from his work, and by night, when she stood red-gold and white on every wall of his room in the darkness, it grew more and more incredible that he could meet her and not tell her that he wanted to spend all the rest of his life with her.  He felt ashamed that he was not her husband, and at the back of his mind was a confused consciousness of inverted impropriety, as if continuance