Keene eyed her with observation.  He himself had slight depth for a man doomed to live by his wits, and he was under the disadvantage of really feeling something of what he said.  He was not a rascal by predilection; merely driven that way by the forces which in our social state abundantly make for rascality.

‘Miss Mutimer,’ he replied, with a stage sigh, ’why do you tempt my weakness?  I am on my honour; I am endeavouring to earn your good opinion.  Spare me!’

’Oh, I’m sure there’s no harm in you, Mr. Keene.  I suppose you’d better go and see after your—­your business.’

‘You are right.  I go at once, Princess.  I may call you Princess?’

’Well, I don’t know about that.  Of course only when there’s no one else in the room.’

‘But I shall think it always.’

‘That I can’t prevent, you know.’

‘Ah, I fear you mean nothing, Miss Mutimer.’

‘Nothing at all.’

He took his leave, and Alice enjoyed reflecting upon the dialogue, which certainly had meant nothing for her in any graver sense.

‘Now, that’s what the books call flirtation,’ she said to herself.  ‘I think I can do that.’

And on the whole she could, vastly better than might have been expected of her birth and breeding.

At six o’clock a note was delivered for her.  Richard wrote from an hotel in the neighbourhood, asking her to come to him.  She found him in a private sitting-room, taking a meal.

‘Why didn’t you come to the house?’ she asked.  ’You knew mother never comes down-stairs.’

Richard looked at her with lowered brows.

‘You mean to say she’s doing that in earnest?’

’That she is She comes down early in the morning and gets all the food she wants for the day.  I heard her cooking something in a frying-pan to-day.  She hasn’t been out of the house yet.’

‘Does she know about Jane?’

‘No.  I know what it would be if I went and told her.’

He ate in silence.  Alice waited.

‘You must go and see Emma,’ was his next remark.  ’Tell her there’s a grave in Manor Park Cemetery; her father and mother were buried there, you know.  Keene ’ll look after it all and he’ll come and tell you what to do.’

‘Why did you come up?’

’Oh, I couldn’t talk about these things in letters.  You’ll have to tell mother; she might want to go to the funeral.’

‘I don’t see why I should do all your disagreeable work, Dick!’

‘Very well, don’t do it,’ he replied sullenly, throwing down his knife and fork.

A scene of wrangling followed, without violence, but of the kind which is at once a cause and an effect of demoralisation.  The old disagreements between them had been in another tone, at all events on Richard’s side, for they had arisen from his earnest disapproval of frivolities and the like.  Richard could no longer speak in that way.  To lose the power of honest reproof in consequence of a moral lapse is to any man a wide-reaching calamity; to a man of Mutimer’s calibre it meant disaster of which the end could not be foreseen.