‘Sit in this deep chair,’ said her brother.  ’I’ll have a cigarette.  How’s mother?’

‘Well, she hasn’t been quite herself,’ Alice replied, gazing into the fire.  ’She can’t get to feel at home, that’s the truth of it.  She goes. very often to the old house.’

‘Goes very often to the old house, does she?’

He repeated the words mechanically, watching smoke that issued from his lips.  ‘Suppose she’ll get all right in time.’

When the coffee arrived a decanter of cognac accompanied it.  Richard had got into the habit of using the latter rather freely of late.  He needed a stimulant in view of the conversation that was before him.  The conversation was difficult to begin.  For a quarter of an hour he strayed over subjects, each of which, he thought, might bring him to the point.  A question from Alice eventually gave him the requisite impulse.

‘What’s the bad news you’ve got to tell me, Dick?’ she asked shyly.

’Bad news?  Why, yes, I suppose it is bad, and it’s no use pretending anything else.  I’ve brought you down here just to tell it you.  Somebody must know first, and it had better be somebody who’ll listen patiently, and perhaps help me to get over it.  I don’t know quite how you’ll take it, Alice.  For anything I can tell you may get up and be off, and have nothing more to do with me.’

’Why, what ever can it be, Dick?  Don’t talk nonsense.  You’re not afraid of me, I should think.’

’Yes, I am a bit afraid of you, old girl.  It isn’t a nice thing to tell you, and there’s the long and short of it.  I’m hanged if I know how to begin.’

He laughed in an irresolute way.  Trying to light a new cigarette from the remnants of the one he had smoked, his hands shook.  Then he had recourse again to cognac.

Alice was drumming with her foot on the floor.  She sat forward, her arms crossed upon her lap.  Her eyes were still on the fire.

‘Is it anything about Emma, Dick?’ she asked, after a disconcerting silence.

‘Yes, it is.’

’Hadn’t you better tell me at once?  It isn’t at all nice to feel like this.’

’Well, I’ll tell you.  I can’t marry Emma; I’m going to marry someone else.’

Alice was prepared, but the plain words caused her a moment’s consternation.

‘Oh, what ever will they all say, Dick?’ she exclaimed in a low voice.

’That’s bad enough, to be sure, but I think more about Emma herself.  I feel ashamed of myself, and that’s the plain truth.  Of course I shall always give her and her sisters all the money they want to live upon, but that isn’t altogether a way out.  If only I could have hinted something to her before now.  I’ve let it go on so long.  I’m going to be married in a fortnight.’

He could not look Alice in the face, nor she him.  His shame made him angry; he flung the half-smoked cigarette violently into the fire-place, and began to walk about the room.  Alice was speaking, but he did not heed her, and continued with impatient loudness.