“In that case we shall live in Italy for the rest of our lives,” said Lucy with twinkling eyes; “but we must come back in a year and take a studio in Chelsea.”

“Why not in Gartley?  Remember, the Professor will be lonely.”

“No, he won’t.  Mrs. Jasher, as I told you, intends to marry him.”

“He might not wish to marry her”

“That doesn’t matter,” rejoined Lucy, with the cleverness of a woman.  “She can manage to bring the marriage about.  Besides, I want to break with the old life here, and begin quite a new one with you.  When I am your wife and Mrs. Jasher is my step-father’s, everything will be capitally arranged.”

“Well, I hope so,” said Archie heartily, “for I want you all to myself and have no desire to share you with anyone else.  But I say,” he glanced at his watch; “it is getting towards nine o’clock, and I am desperately hungry.  Can’t we go to dinner?”

“Not until Mrs. Jasher arrives,” said Lucy primly.

“Oh, bother—!”

Hope, being quite exasperated with hunger, would have launched out into a speech condemning the widow’s unpunctuality, when in the hall below the drawing-room was heard the sound of the door opening and closing.  Without doubt this was Mrs. Jasher arriving at last, and Lucy ran out of the room and down the stairs to welcome her in her eagerness to get Archie seated at the dinner table.  The young man lingered by the open door of the drawing-room, ready to welcome the widow, when he heard Lucy utter an exclamation of surprise and became aware that she was ascending the stairs along with Professor Braddock.  At once he reflected there would be trouble, since he was in the house with Lucy, and lacked the necessary chaperon which Braddock’s primitive Anglo-Saxon instincts insisted upon.

“I did not know you were returning to-night,” Lucy was saying when she re-entered the drawing-room with her step-father.

“I arrived by the six o’clock train,” explained the Professor, unwinding a large red scarf from his neck, and struggling out of his overcoat with the assistance of his daughter.  “Ha, Hope, good evening.”

“Where have you been since?” asked Lucy, throwing the Professor’s coat and wraps on to a chair.

“With Mrs. Jasher,” said Braddock, warming his plump hands at the fire.  “So you must blame me that she is not here to preside at dinner as the chaperon of you young people.”

Lucy and her lover glanced at one another in surprise.  This light and airy tone was a new one for the Professor to take.  Instead of being angry, he seemed to be unusually gay, and looked at them in quite a jocular manner for a dry-as-dust scientist.

“We waited dinner for her, father,” ventured Lucy timidly.

“Then I am ready to eat it,” announced Braddock.  “I am extremely hungry, my dear.  I can’t live on love, you know.”

“Live on love?” Lucy stared, and Archie laughed quietly.