‘Miss.  Lord quite well?—­We haven’t seen much of her lately.’

’I don’t know why, I’m sure.—­Nobody can depend upon her very much.’

‘Well, I’ll leave you,’ said the other, with a dreary look about the room.  ’The table ought to have been cleared by now—­but that’s nothing new.’

‘Confounded servants,’ muttered Horace.

‘Oh yes, the servants,’ was Peachey’s ironical reply.

As soon as he was left alone, Horace turned out the gas.  Then he stood near the door, trembling with amorous anticipation.  But minutes went by; his impatience grew intolerable; he stamped, and twisted his fingers together.  Then of a sudden the door opened.

‘Why, it’s dark, there’s nobody here.’

Fanny discovered her mistake.  She was seized and lifted off her feet.

’Oh!  Do you want to eat me?  I’ll hit you as hard as I can, I will!  You’re spoiling my dress?’

The last remonstrance was in a note that Horace did not venture to disregard.

‘Strike a light, silly!  I know you’ve done something to my dress.’

Horace pleaded abjectly to be forgiven, and that the room might remain shadowed; but Fanny was disturbed in temper.

‘If you don’t light the gas, I’ll go at once.’

‘I haven’t any matches, darling.’

’Oh, just like you!  You never have anything.  I thought every man carried matches.’

She broke from him, and ran out.  Wretched in the fear that she might not return, Horace waited on the threshold.  In the drawing-room some one was singing ‘The Maid of the Mill.’  It came to an end, and there sounded voices, which the tormented listener strove to recognise.  For at least ten minutes he waited, and was all but frantic, when the girl made her appearance, coming downstairs.

‘Never do that again,’ she said viciously.  ’I’ve had to unfasten my things, and put them straight.  What a nuisance you are!’

He stood cowed before her, limp and tremulous.

’There, light the gas.  Why couldn’t you come into the drawing-room, like other people do?’

‘Who is there?’ asked the young man, when he had obeyed her.

‘Go and see for yourself.’

‘Don’t be angry, Fanny.’  He followed her, like a dog, as she walked round the table to look at herself in the mirror over the fireplace.  ‘It was only because I’m so fond of you.’

‘Oh, what a silly you are!’ she laughed, seating herself on the arm of an easy-chair.  ‘Go ahead!  What’s the latest?’

’Well, for one thing, I’ve had a very clear understanding with the gov’nor about my independence.  I showed him that I meant having my own way, and he might bully as much as he liked.’

It was not thus that Horace would naturally have spoken, not thus that he thought of his father.  Fanny had subdued him to her own level, poisoned him with the desires excited by her presence.  And he knew his baseness; he was not ignorant of the girl’s ignoble nature.  Only the fury of a virgin passion enabled him to talk, and sometimes think, as though he were in love with ideal purity.