“You have been quick, but it is surely wasteful to cook two chops.”

“You will not find them too much, I hope.  I am sure you ought to eat both.”

“I do not know, but the meat is good.”  He fell to and ate with relish.  Katherine asked where she could find some wine for him.  He again produced his keys, selected one, and told her to open a door at the end of the room, which she fancied led into another.  It was a cupboard, plentifully filled with bottles of various descriptions, from among which, by her patient’s direction, she selected one labelled cognac, and gave him some in water.

Katherine sat down and watched the old man demolish both chops with evident enjoyment.  Then he paused, drank a little brandy and water, and drew over the plate containing the butter, and smelled it very deliberately.

“You have extravagant ways, I am afraid,” he said.  “This is fresh butter.”

“That piece only cost fourpence-halfpenny,” she said, gravely, “and the little you eat you had better have good.”

“Fourpence-halfpenny!” he repeated, and fell into profound meditation, from which he broke with a sudden return of anger.  “What a double-dyed villain and robber that infernal woman has been!  She told me that prices had risen to such a height that the commonest salt butter was eighteenpence a pound, that every chop was a shilling, that—­that—­” Then breaking off, with an air of the deepest pathos he exclaimed:  “Thirty shillings a week I gave her to keep the house, and she has left the butcher unpaid for six months.  But I will not pay him.  He shall suffer.  Why did he trust her?  What did you pay for these things?” he ended, abruptly, in a high key.

Katherine silently handed him the back of a letter on which she had scribbled down the items.

“What is the use of showing me this, when I cannot read—­when I have no glasses?” he exclaimed, impatiently.

“True.  I must try and find them for you.  Where did you first miss them?”

“Oh, I don’t know.  I had them on when I went to see that——­woman out of the house.”

Calling Susan to assist in the search, Katherine looked carefully in the hall, but in vain, when her young assistant gave a cry of joy; she had almost trodden on them as they lay between a mangy mat and the foot of the stairs.

The recovery of his precious glasses did more to soothe the ruffled spirit of the recluse than anything else.  He wiped them tenderly, and looking through them, observed that they were all right.  Then he sat in profound silence, while Susan, under Katherine’s directions, cleared up the hearth, and removed the heap of dust and ashes which had nearly put out the fire.  When she had retired, carrying off the tray, Mr. Liddell turned his keen eyes on his young visitor, and said: 

“You came in the nick of time, and you seem to know what you are about; but I dare say I should have pulled through without you.  Now about your story.  Before anything else I must be assured that you are really Frederic Liddell’s daughter.  Not that your being so gives you the smallest claim upon me.”