The accepted lover, at that moment being whirled back by express train to Glasgow, would not have approved of those warm words, nor of the light shining all over the girl’s sweet face as she uttered them.  But he would have been compelled to admit that in Gladys’s old companion of the slums he had no mean rival.  The St. Vincent Street tailor had done his duty by his eccentric customer, and not only given him value for his money, but converted him, so far as outward appearance goes, into a new man.  Philosophers and cynics have from time to time had their fling at the tyranny of clothes, but it still remains an undisputed fact that a well-dressed man is always much more comfortable and self-respecting than an ill-dressed one.  When Walter Hepburn beheld the new man the tailor had turned out, a strange change came over him, and he saw in himself possibilities hitherto undreamed of.  He realised for the first time that he looked fitter than most men to win a woman’s approval, and I am quite safe in saying that Gladys owed this totally unlooked-for visit entirely to the St. Vincent Street tailor.

‘So very glad to see you,’ she repeated, and she thought it no treachery to her absent lover to keep hold of the hand she had taken in greeting.  ’And looking so nice and so handsome!  Oh, Walter, now I am no longer unhappy about you, for I see you have awakened at last to a sense of what you ought to be.’

It was a tribute to clothes, but it sank with unalloyed sweetness into the young man’s heart.

’You are very kind to me, Gladys, and I do not deserve any such welcome.  I was afraid, indeed, that you might refuse to see me, as you would be perfectly justified in doing.’

‘Oh, Walter,’ she said reproachfully, ’how dare you say such a thing?  Refuse to see you, indeed!  Do sit down and tell me everything.  Do you know, it is just my dinner hour, and you shall dine with me; and how delightful that will be.  I thought of sending down to say I didn’t wish any dinner, it is so lonely eating alone.’

‘Where is the lady who lives with you?  You had a lady, hadn’t you?’

’Yes—­Miss Peck.  She has gone back to Lincoln to see her aunt who is dying, and I am quite alone, though to-morrow I expect one of Mr. Fordyce’s daughters.  And now, tell me, have you heard anything of Liz?’

The voice sank to a grave whisper, and her eyes grew luminous with anxiety and sympathetic concern.

‘Nothing,’ Walter answered, with a shake of his head, ’and I have been inquiring all round, too.  My father and mother have never seen or heard anything of her.  I think you must have made a mistake that night in Berkeley Street.’

‘If it was not Liz, it was her ghost,’ said Gladys quite gravely.  ’I cannot understand it.  But, come, let us go down-stairs.  You ought to offer me your arm, Walter.  I cannot help laughing when I think of Mrs. Fordyce, she would be so horrified were she to see me now.  She tries so hard to make me quite conventional, and she isn’t able to do it.’