"But you will wish to come in and tell Elaine good-night first; you will not sleep otherwise," she said, teasingly.
"You are right; but I must practise self-denial; indeed, it is my life just now, and endeavor to earn a blissful reward by gaining her release from Mr. Cobbe. Did you ever see such a contrast in faces and expression as that vixen, Cole's wife, presented, compared to our dear Elaine?"
"No; unless it was myself, which of course you did not see," she said, saucily; "but I like you all the better for it. I hate your men who are all things to all women; go now, and success attend you. Good-night."
Walking rapidly, winged love buoying him up, he soon reaches the Spadina Avenue terminus, when, fortune smiling, he has not to wait the twenty minutes for the car, for the driver is in the act of turning the horses' heads south. Entering, wrapt in thought, he does not notice the numbers on this broad highway who make their ingress or egress. Pretty girls, peeping from cloud-like fascinators, attended by their chosen valentine, or by chaperon, evidently, by their gay trappings, bent on scoring a last dance before Lent, for this is St. Valentine's Day, and to-morrow will be Ash Wednesday, and so good-bye for a season to the pleasures of Terpsichore. No, he is observant of nothing, excepting the many stoppages, at which he is impatient. Even electric lighted King street is passed through unnoticed; men thinking, on seeing his bent head and knit brows, poor fellow, probably bit by the "Central." Girls whispering, "He has missed the ring in his Shrove Tuesday pancakes this evening, getting only the button. What a pity, for he would be handsome if he would only see us."
At the crossing of his turn north, the driver calling Sherbourne street, he changes cars, and in due course leaves them, to walk up Seaton street. Reaching his number, he rings the bell of a small rough-cast house. A man in his shirt sleeves, and with the smell of fresh pine about him, opens the door.
"Does a young woman, named Hill, live here?"
"Yes, sir; just step in, please," and ushering him into a sitting-room, at one end there being a new pine table nearly finished, tools and shavings about. A woman, who is nursing a baby, says: "Take this chair, sir; but I'm a'most feared Beatrice has too bad a head to see you."
"Tell her, please, that I must see her, if she is able to sit up at all," he says, decidedly.
"Very well, sir," and going to another room on same flat, he could hear half-angry words and sobs.
The woman returning, eyeing him suspiciously, said: