Some strange, sweet fool feminine of gentle birth and deplorable upbringing fell in love with a vehemently socialistic young artisan by the name of Gedge and married him.  Her casual but proud-minded family wiped her off the proud family slate.  She brought Phyllis into the world and five years afterwards found herself be-Gedged out of existence.  They were struggling people in those days, and before her death my wife used to employ her, when she could, for household sewing and whatnot.  And tiny Phyllis, in a childless home, became a petted darling.  When my great loneliness came upon me, it was a solace to have the little dainty prattling thing to spend an occasional hour in my company.  Gedge, an excellent workman, set up as a contractor.  He took my modest home under his charge.  A leaky tap, a broken pane, a new set of bookshelves, a faulty drainpipe—­all were matters for Gedge.  I abhorred his politics but I admired his work, and I continued, with Mrs. Marigold’s motherly aid, to make much of Phyllis.

Gedge, for queer motives of his own, sent her to as good a school as he could afford, as a matter of fact an excellent school, one where she met girls of a superior social class and learned educated speech and graceful manners.  Her holidays, poor child, were somewhat dreary, for her father, an anti-social creature, had scarce a friend in the town.  Save for here and there an invitation to tea from Betty or myself, she did not cross the threshold of a house in Wellingsford.  But to my house, all through her schooldays and afterwards, Phyllis came, and on such occasions Mrs. Marigold prepared teas of the organic lusciousness dear to the heart of a healthy girl.

Now, here comes the point of all this palaver.  Young Master Randall used also to come to my house.  Now and then by chance they met there.  They were good boy and girl friends.

I want to make it absolutely clear that her acquaintance with Randall was not any vulgar picking-up-in-the-street affair.

When she left school, her father made her his book-keeper, secretary, confidential clerk.  Anybody turning into the office to summon Gedge to repair a roof or a burst boiler had a preliminary interview with Phyllis.  Young Randall, taking over the business of the upkeep of his mother’s house, gradually acquired the habit of such preliminary interviews.  The whole imbroglio was very simple, very natural.  They had first met at my own rich cake and jam-puff bespread tea-table.  When Randall went into the office to speak, presumably, about a defective draught in the kitchen range, and really about things quite different, the ethics of the matter depended entirely on Randall’s point of view.  Their meetings had been contrived by no unmaidenly subterfuge on the part of Phyllis.  She knew him to be above her in social station.  She kept him off as long as she could.  But que voulez-vous?  Randall was a very good-looking, brilliant, and fascinating fellow; Phyllis was a dear