she hid her hot face in her hands, and cried silently.

There was absolute stillness in the room for some minutes. At length she looked up and saw Mr. Bragg still sitting as before, with loosely clasped hands and downcast eyes. May rose to her feet, and said timidly, "I hope you are not angry with me for—for telling you?"

Mr. Bragg stood up also, and placing one broad, powerful hand on her head, as a father might have done, looked down gravely at her upturned face.

"Angry! Lord bless you, my child, what must I be made of to be angry with you?"

"Oh, thank you, Mr. Bragg! And will you promise—but I know you will—not to betray me?"

He did not notice this question. His mind was working uneasily. He thrust his hands into his pockets, and walked to the other side of the room and back, before saying—

"This person that you've promised to marry, is he one that your people here"—he jerked his head over his shoulder in the direction in which Mrs. Dormer-Smith had disappeared—"would approve of?"

"Oh, yes!" answered May. Then she added, not quite so confidently, "I think so. At any rate, I am very proud to be loved by him."

"And Mrs. Dobbs—"

"Oh, of course, dear Granny thinks no one could be too good for me," said May apologetically. "But she knows his worth."

"Will you please tell me how long Mrs. Dobbs has known of this?" asked Mr. Bragg, with a touch of sternness.

"Known? She knew, of course, as soon as I knew myself—on the twenty-seventh of last September," answered poor May, with damask-rose cheeks.

Mr. Bragg made a mental calculation of dates. His face relaxed; and he now replied to May's previous question.

"Yes, of course, I'll promise not to say a word till you give me leave. Especially since Mrs. Dobbs knows all about it. Otherwise, you're young to guide yourself entirely in a matter so serious as this is."

She thanked him again, and dried some stray tear-drops that hung on her pretty eyelashes.

He stood for a moment looking at her intently. But there was nothing in his gaze to startle her maiden innocence, or make her shrink from him; it was an honest, earnest, kindly, though melancholy look.

"Well," said he at last, "you're not so curious as some young ladies. You haven't asked me what it was I was going to say to you."

"I dare say it was nothing serious," she answered quickly. "In any case I am quite sure you will say, and leave unsaid, all that is right."

"That's a—what you might call a pretty large order, Miss Cheffington. I'm an awkward brute sometimes, I dare say, but I'll tell you this much: If I don't say what I was going to say, it isn't from pride. I have had that feeling, but I haven't it now, in talking to you. No, it isn't from pride, but because I want you and me to be friends—downright good friends, you know. And, perhaps, it would be more agreeable for you not to have anything concerning me in your memory that you'd wish to be what you might call sponged out of the record. I appreciate your behaviour, Miss Cheffington. You acted generous, and like the noble-hearted young lady I've always thought you, when you told me that secret of yours. Why now——Come, come, don't you fret yourself!" he exclaimed softly, for the tears were again trickling down her cheeks.

"You are so—so very kind and good to me!" she said brokenly.

"Lord bless me, what else could I be? There, there, don't you vex yourself by fancying me cast down or disappointed about—anything in particular. A man doesn't come to my age without getting used to disappointments, big and little."

He took up his hat and stopped her by a gesture as she moved towards the bell.

"No; don't ring, please! I've got an appointment in the City, and not much time to spare if I walk it. So I'll just let myself out quietly, without disturbing anybody. You can mention to your aunt that I shall have the honour of calling on her again very soon. Good-bye, Miss Cheffington."

May held out her hand. He touched it very lightly with his fingers, and then relinquished it silently.

"You are sure," she said pleadingly, "you are quite sure you are not angry with me?"

"There ain't a many things I'm so sure of as I am of that," answered Mr. Bragg, in his ordinary quiet tones. And then he opened the door and was gone.

He went down the stairs, and through the hall, and into the street without being challenged. He shut the street door softly behind him, with a kind of instinct of escape; and marched away rather quickly, but square and steady as ever.

After a while he looked at his watch, hesitated, and finally hailed a hansom cab.

"Poultry! You can take it easy. I'm not in a hurry," he said to the driver, as he got into the vehicle.

Then Mr. Bragg leaned back, and began to think. He had a habit of frequently closing his eyes when meditating, and this habit it was which had impelled him to get into a cab, since a pedestrian in the streets of London could only indulge in it at the risk of his life; and Mr. Bragg had no—not even the most passing—temptation to suicide. He shut his eyes tight now, tilted his hat backward from his forehead, and reviewed the situation.

He had behaved very well to May, and was conscious of having behaved well to her; she deserved the best and most considerate treatment; but Mr. Bragg was no angel, and he was extremely angry with Mrs. Dormer-Smith. He felt some irritation—very unreasonably, as he would by-and-by acknowledge—against Mrs. Dobbs—she had been rather exasperatingly in the right. But Mrs. Dormer-Smith had been most exasperatingly in the wrong, and he was very angry with her. Why had she not confessed that she knew nothing at all about her niece's feelings? It was clear she was quite ignorant of them. She had only to say that she could not undertake to answer for May; that would at least have been honest!

"I dare say I might have spoken, all the same," Mr. Bragg admitted to himself. "I think p'r'aps I should. I'd got to that point where a man must know for himself what the answer is to that question, and when 'likely' or 'unlikely' won't serve his turn. But I could ha' managed different. I needn't have looked like a Tomnoddy. Trotted out there—making a reg'lar show of a man; not a doubt but what that flunkey knew all about it. Woman's a fool!"

Mr. Bragg's indignation rolled off like thunder in these broken growlings. And beneath it all—deeper than all—there lay an aching sorrow. It would not break his heart, as he knew; it might not even spoil his dinner; but it was a real sorrow, nevertheless. In the moment of assuring him that he must not hope to win her, May had seemed to him better worth winning than ever; her soft touch had opened a long sealed-up spring of tenderness. There was some rough poetry within him, none the less pathetic because he knew thoroughly, sensitively, how unable he was to give it expression, and how ridiculous the mere suggestion of his trying to do so would seem to most people. He resolutely refrained as much as possible from letting his mind busy itself with these hidden feelings; his very thoughts seemed to hurt them at that moment.

He preferred to nurse his wrath against Mrs. Dormer-Smith, and to resent her having betrayed him into an undignified position. Mr. Bragg had been prosperous and powerful for many years, and the sense of being balked was very irksome to him; more irksome than in the days of his poverty, when youth and hope were elastic, and battle seemed a not unwelcome condition of existence.

But before he reached the end of his eastward journey Mr. Bragg began to speculate about the man whom May loved. In spite of Mrs. Dobbs's emphatic denial, he could not dismiss the idea that Theodore Bransby was the man. He had gathered the impression that Mrs. Dobbs did not like Theodore, and he remembered May's deprecating words, "Granny would not think any one too good for me!" which seemed to indicate that Mrs. Dobbs had not hailed the