“You put that there, I’m sure.  It’s beautiful.”

The girl answered, with piteous eagerness: 

“Oh, would you like it?  Do take it.  Count Rosek gave it me.”  She started away from the door.  “Oh, that’s papa.  He’ll be coming in!”

Gyp heard a man clear his throat, and the rattle of an umbrella falling into a stand; the sight of the girl wilting and shrinking against the sideboard steadied her.  Then the door opened, and Mr. Wagge entered.  Short and thick, in black frock coat and trousers, and a greyish beard, he stared from one to the other.  He looked what he was, an Englishman and a chapelgoer, nourished on sherry and mutton, who could and did make his own way in the world.  His features, coloured, as from a deep liverishness, were thick, like his body, and not ill-natured, except for a sort of anger in his small, rather piggy grey eyes.  He said in a voice permanently gruff, but impregnated with a species of professional ingratiation: 

“Ye-es?  Whom ’ave I—?”

“Mrs. Fiorsen.”

“Ow!” The sound of his breathing could be heard distinctly; he twisted a chair round and said: 

“Take a seat, won’t you?”

Gyp shook her head.

In Mr. Wagge’s face a kind of deference seemed to struggle with some more primitive emotion.  Taking out a large, black-edged handkerchief, he blew his nose, passed it freely over his visage, and turning to his daughter, muttered: 

“Go upstairs.”

The girl turned quickly, and the last glimpse of her white face whipped up Gyp’s rage against men.  When the door was shut, Mr. Wagge cleared his throat; the grating sound carried with it the suggestion of enormously thick linings.

He said more gruffly than ever: 

“May I ask what ’as given us the honour?”

“I came to see your daughter.”

His little piggy eyes travelled from her face to her feet, to the walls of the room, to his own watch-chain, to his hands that had begun to rub themselves together, back to her breast, higher than which they dared not mount.  Their infinite embarrassment struck Gyp.  She could almost hear him thinking:  ’Now, how can I discuss it with this attractive young female, wife of the scoundrel who’s ruined my daughter?  Delicate-that’s what it is!’ Then the words burst hoarsely from him.

“This is an unpleasant business, ma’am.  I don’t know what to say.  Reelly I don’t.  It’s awkward; it’s very awkward.”

Gyp said quietly: 

“Your daughter is desperately unhappy; and that can’t be good for her just now.”

Mr. Wagge’s thick figure seemed to writhe.  “Pardon me, ma’am,” he spluttered, “but I must call your husband a scoundrel.  I’m sorry to be impolite, but I must do it.  If I had ’im ’ere, I don’t know that I should be able to control myself—­I don’t indeed.”  Gyp made a movement of her gloved hands, which he seemed to interpret as