"Why, of course, mum. I never gets lost, I don't." Half a minute later she ran downstairs, whistling as she went.
The minutes dragged themselves slowly away, and Clara was working herself into a fever of apprehension, when a well-known footfall on the stairs caused a cry of gladness to burst from her lips. "At last!" she exclaimed as she started to her feet and hurried to the door. "How glad I am that you are safely back," she added, as her husband entered the room. "You were away so long that I grew quite frightened."
"The evening was so pleasant, that I extended my walk farther than I intended. I must be a caged bird now for the next four-and-twenty hours. Heigh-ho!"
"Will you not have something to eat?"
"Thanks; nothing at present," he answered as he proceeded to lay aside his slouched hat, his overcoat, and the muffler which had shrouded the lower part of his face. Then he took up a book and sat down in an easy-chair near the fire.
His wife's eyes brimmed with tears as they rested on him. "My poor boy!" she said softly to herself. "This life is killing him. When, oh, when will it end!" She sat down to her needlework.
Miss Primby was the first to break the silence. "Do you know, my dear," she said to her niece, "that Monsieur Picot puts me greatly in mind of the Count de Bonnechose, a French nobleman who once made me an offer of marriage. He used to speak just the same delightful broken English--and then he had such great black eyes, which seemed to pierce right through you, and the loveliest waxed moustaches; so that when he clasped his hands and turned up his eyes till nothing but the whites of them were visible, and murmured 'Mon ange,' and called me his 'beautiful Engleesh mees,' can you wonder that my heart used to thrill responsively?"
Clara could not repress a smile. "I am by no means sure that I should have cared to call that count my uncle."
"It was a mercy that I sent him about his business. He turned out to be no nobleman at all, but only a hairdresser's assistant whose father had left him a little money. But certainly he had remarkably fine eyes."
Again there was a brief space of silence. This time it was broken by a knock which sounded all the more startling because no one had heard the faintest sound of footsteps on the stairs. All three started to their feet and looked at each other. Then, at a sign from Clara, Miss Primby crossed to the door and opened it.