probably a dress of cream-coloured lace in numberless flounces; he remembered that her hair was abundant and shadowed her face.  The effect of firelight played over the hangings of the bed; she stood by the bed and raised her fur cloak from her shoulders.  The man was tall and thin, and the light caught the points of the short sharp beard.  The scene had bitten itself into Mike’s mind, and it reappeared at intervals perfect as a print, for he sometimes envied the calm and healthfulness of honourable love.

“Great Scott! twelve o’clock!” Smiling, conscious of the incongruity, he set to work, and in about three hours had finished a long letter, in which he usefully advised “light o’ loves” on the advantages of foreign travel.

“I wonder,” he thought, “how I can write in such a strain while I’m in love with her.  What beastliness!  I hate the whole thing.  I desire a new life; I have tried vice long enough and am weary of it; I’m not happy, and if I were to gain the whole world it would be dust and ashes without her.  Then why not take that step which would bring her to me?” He faced his cowardice angrily, and resolved to post the letter.  But he stopped before he had walked fifty yards, for his doubts followed him, buzzing and stinging like bees.  Striving to rid himself of them, and weary of considering his own embarrassed condition, he listened gladly to Lizzie, who deplored Mount Rorke’s cruelty and her husband’s continuous ill luck.

“I told him his family would never receive me; I didn’t want to marry him; for days I couldn’t make up my mind; he can’t say I persuaded him into it.”

“But you are happy now; don’t you like being married?”

“Oh, yes, I should be happy enough if things only went better with us.  He is so terribly unlucky.  No one works harder than Frank; he often sits up till three o’clock in the morning writing.  He tries everything, but nothing seems to succeed with him.  There’s this paper.  I don’t believe he has ever had a penny out of it.  Tell me, Mr. Fletcher, do you think it will ever succeed?”

“Newspapers generally fail for want of a concerted plan of appeal to a certain section of society kept steadily in view; they are nearly always vague and undetermined; but I believe when four clever pens are brought together, and write continuously, and with set purpose and idea, that they can, that they must and invariably do create a property worth at least twenty thousand pounds.”

“Frank has gone to the station to meet Thigh.  I distrust that man dreadfully; I hope he won’t rob my poor husband.  Frank told me to get a couple of pheasants for dinner.  Which way are you going?  To the post-office?  Do you want a stamp?”

“No, thank you, my letter is stamped.”  He held the letter in the box unable to loose his fingers, embarrassed in the consideration whether marriage would permit him to develop his artistic nature as he intended.  Lizzie was looking at him, and it was with difficulty that he concealed from her the fact that he had not dropped his letter in the box.