“You shall,” said he, “when I can pay for it,” and drew her away.

The tears of disappointment stood in her eyes, and his heart yearned over her.  But he kept his head.

He changed the dinner hour to six, and used to go out directly afterwards.

She began to complain of his leaving her alone like that.

“Well, but wait a bit,” said he; “suppose I am making a little money by it, to buy you something you have set your heart on, poor darling!”

In a very few days after this, he brought her a little box with a slit in it.  He shook it, and money rattled; then he unlocked it, and poured out a little pile of silver.  “There,” said he, “put on your bonnet, and come and buy those things.”

She put on her bonnet, and on the way she asked how it came to be all in silver.

“That is a puzzler,” said he, “isn’t it?”

“And how did you make it, dear? by writing?”

“No.”

“By fees from the poor people?”

“What, undersell my brethren!  Hang it, no!  My dear, I made it honestly, and some day I will tell you how I made it; at present, all I will tell you is this:  I saw my darling longing for something she had a right to long for; I saw the tears in her sweet eyes, and—­oh, come along, do.  I am wretched till I see you with the things in your hand.”

They went to the shop; and Staines sat and watched Rosa buying baby-clothes.  Oh, it was a pretty sight to see this modest young creature, little more than a child herself, anticipating maternity, but blushing every now and then, and looking askant at her lord and master.  How his very bowels yearned over her!

And when they got home, she spread the things on a table, and they sat hand in hand, and looked at them, and she leaned her head on his shoulder, and went quietly to sleep there.

And yet, as time rolled on, she became irritable at times, and impatient, and wanted all manner of things she could not have, and made him unhappy.

Then he was out from six o’clock till one, and she took it into her head to be jealous.  So many hours to spend away from her!  Now that she wanted all his comfort.

Presently, Ellen, the new maid, got gossiping in the yard, and a groom told her her master had a sweetheart on the sly, he thought; for he drove the brougham out every evening himself; “and,” said the man, “he wears a mustache at night.”

Ellen ran in, brimful of this, and told the cook; the cook told the washerwoman; the washerwoman told a dozen families, till about two hundred people knew it.

At last it came to Mrs. Staines in a roundabout way, at the very moment when she was complaining to Lady Cicely Treherne of her hard lot.  She had been telling her she was nothing more than a lay-figure in the house.

“My husband is housekeeper now, and cook, and all, and makes me delicious dishes, I can tell you; such curries!  I couldn’t keep the house with five pounds a week, so now he does it with three:  and I never get the carriage, because walking is best for me; and he takes it out every night to make money.  I don’t understand it.”