umbrella? Thanks. Good night. No cab: I will walk."




CHAPTER II


Mr. Taynton lived in a square, comfortable house in Montpellier Road, and
thus, when he left Mrs. Assheton's there was some two miles of pavement
and sea front between him and home. But the night was of wonderful
beauty, a night of mid June, warm enough to make the most cautious secure
of chill, and at the same time just made crisp with a little breeze that
blew or rather whispered landward from over the full-tide of the sleeping
sea. High up in the heavens swung a glorious moon, which cast its path of
white enchanted light over the ripples, and seemed to draw the heart even
as it drew the eyes heavenward. Mr. Taynton certainly, as he stepped out
beneath the stars, with the sea lying below him, felt, in his delicate
and sensitive nature, the charm of the hour, and being a good if not a
brisk walker, he determined to go home on foot. And he stepped westward
very contentedly.

The evening, it would appear, had much pleased him--for it was long
before his smile of retrospective pleasure faded from his pleasant mobile
face. Morris's trust and confidence in him had been extraordinarily
pleasant to him: and modest and unassuming as he was, he could not help a
secret gratification at the thought. What a handsome fellow Morris was
too, how gay, how attractive! He had his father's dark colouring, and
tall figure, but much of his mother's grace and charm had gone to the
modelling of that thin sensitive mouth and the long oval of his face. Yet