very hungry and very thirsty-and Tyson stood behind her stroking his moustache. He was not looking at her now, nor thinking of her. He was contemplating that adorable piece of folly, his wife.

29

CHAPTER III.

MR AND MRS NEVILL TYSON AT HOME.

PERHAPS it was as well that Mrs Nevill Tyson took things so lightly, otherwise she might have been somewhat oppressed by her surroundings at Thorneytoft. That hideous old barrack stared with all the uncompromising truculence of bare white stone on nature that smiled agreeably round it in lawn and underwood. Old Tyson had bought the house as it stood from an impecunious nobleman, supplying its deficiencies according to his own very respectable fancy. The result was a little startling. Worm-eaten oak was flanked by mahogany veneer, brocade and tapestry were eked out with horse-hair and green rep, gules and

azure from the stained-glass lozenge lattices were reflected in a hundred twinkling, dangling lustres; and you came upon lions rampant in a wilderness of wax - flowers. What with antique heraldry and utilitarian furniture, you would have said there was no place there for anything so frivolously pretty as Mrs Nevill Tyson; unless, indeed, her figure served to give the finishing touch to the ridiculous medley.

The sight of Thorneytoft would have taken the heart out of Mrs Wilcox if anything could. Mrs Wilcox herself looked remarkably crisp and fresh and cheerful in her widow's dress. Tyson rather liked Mrs Wilcox than otherwise (perhaps because she was a little afraid of him and showed it); he noticed with relief that his mother-in-law was beginning to look almost like a lady, and he attributed this pleasing effect to the fact that she was now unable to commit any of her former atrocities of colour. He respected her, too, for wearing her weeds. with an air of genial worldliness. There was something about Mrs Wilcox that

evaded the touch of sorrow; but from certain things-food, clothes, furniture she seemed to catch, as it were, the sense of tears, suggestions of the human tragedy. She was peculiarly sensitive to interiors, and a drawing-room "without any of the little refinements and luxuries, you know—not so much as a flower-pot or a basket-table". weighed heavily on her happy soul. Needless to say she had never dreamed that Nevill would let the house remain in its present state; her intellect could never have grasped so melancholy a possibility, and the fact was somewhat unsettling to her faith in Nevill Tyson. "Isn't it-for a young bride, you know-just a little-a little triste?" And being more than a little afraid of her son-in-law, she waved her hands to give an inoffensive vagueness to her idea. Tyson said he didn't care to spend money on place like Thorneytoft; he didn't know how long he would stay in it; he never stayed anywhere long; he was a pilgrim and a stranger, a sort of cosmopolitan Cain, and he might go abroad again, or he might

take a flat in town for the season. And at the mention of a flat in town all Mrs Wilcox's beautiful beliefs came back to her unimpaired. A flat in town, and a house in the country that you can afford to look down upon-what more could you desire?

Mrs Nevill Tyson did not take the furniture very seriously. For quite three days after her arrival she was content to sit in that very respectable drawing-room, waiting for the callers who never came. She could not have taken the callers very seriously either (what did Mrs Nevill Tyson take seriously, I should like to know?), or else, surely, she would have had some little regard for appearances; she would never have risked being caught at four o'clock in the afternoon sitting on Tyson's knee, doing all sorts of absurd things to his face. First, she stroked his hair straight down over his forehead, which had a singularly brutalising effect, so that she was obliged to push it back again and make it all neat with one of the little tortoise-shell combs that kept her own curls in order. Then she lifted up his