‘You are not going away very soon?’ she whispered to Gaston, coming close to him, and putting her hand on his shoulder; ’I see so little of you now.’

‘My dear child, I can’t help it,’ he said, carelessly removing her hand and walking over to the dinner table; ’I have an engagement in town tonight.’

‘Ah, you no longer care for me,’ said Kitty, with a stifled sob.

Vandeloup shrugged his shoulders.

‘If you are going to make a scene,’ he said, coldly, ’please postpone it.  I don’t want my appetite taken away; would you kindly see if the dinner is ready?’

Kitty dried her eyes and rang the bell, upon which Mrs Pulchop glided into the room, still wrapped in her heavy shawl.

‘It ain’t quite ready yet, sir,’ she said, in answer to Gaston’s question; ’Topsy ’aving been bad with the toothache, which you can’t expect people to cook dinners as is ill!’

‘Why don’t you send her to the hospital?’ said Vandeloup, with a yawn, looking at his watch.

‘Never,’ retorted Mrs Pulchop, in a decisively shrill voice; ’their medicines ain’t pure, and they leaves you at the mercy of doctors to be practised on like a pianer.  Topsy may go to the cemetery like her poor dear father, but never to an inquisition of a hospital;’ and with this Mrs Pulchop faded out of the room, for her peculiar mode of egress could hardly be called walking out.

At last dinner made its appearance, and Kitty recovering her spirits, they had a very pleasant meal together, and then Gaston sat over his coffee with a cigarette, talking to Kitty.

He never was without a cigarette in his mouth, and his fingers were all stained a yellowish brown by the nicotine.  Kitty lay back in a big arm-chair listening to his idle talk and admiring him as he sat at the dinner table.

‘Can’t you stay tonight?’ she said, looking imploringly at him.

Vandeloup shook his head gently.

‘I have an engagement, as I told you before,’ he said, lazily; ‘besides, evenings at home are so dreary.’

‘I will be here,’ said Kitty, reproachfully.

‘That will, of course, make a difference,’ answered Gaston, with a faint sneer; ‘but you know,’ shrugging his shoulders, ’I do not cultivate the domestic virtues.’

‘What will you do when we are married?’ said Kitty, with an uneasy laugh.

‘Enough for the day is the evil thereof,’ replied M. Vandeloup, with a gay smile.

‘What do you mean?’ asked the girl, with a sudden start.

Vandeloup arose from his seat, and lighting another cigarette he lounged over to the fireplace, and leaned against the mantelpiece with his hands in his pockets.

’I mean that when we are married it will be time enough to talk about such things,’ he answered, looking at her through his eyelashes.

‘Then we will talk about them very shortly,’ said Kitty, with an angry laugh, as her hands clenched the arms of the chair tightly; ’for the year is nearly up, and you promised to marry me at the end of it.’