attentive, met her at the Paddington terminus. He was looking haggard,
and seemed to be thinner than when she left him nine days ago.

"Are you well, Philip?" she asked anxiously.

"Oh, quite well," quickly answered poor Philip Hamlyn, smiling a warm
smile, that he meant to look like a gay one. "Nothing ever ails me."

No, nothing might ail him bodily; but mentally--ah, how much! That awful
terror lay upon him thick and threefold; it had not yet come to any
solution, one way or the other. Major Pratt had taken up the very worst
view of it; and spent his days pitching hard names at misbehaving
syrens, gifted with "the deuce's own cunning" and with mermaids' shining
hair.

"And how have things been going, Penelope?" asked Mrs. Hamlyn of the
nurse, as she sat in the nursery with her boy upon her knee. "All
right?"

"Quite so, ma'am. Master Walter has been just as good as gold."

"Mamma's darling!" murmured the doting mother, burying her face in his.
"I have been thinking, Penelope, that your master does not look well,"
she added after a minute.

"No, ma'am? I've not noticed it. We have not seen much of him up here;
he has been at his club a good deal--and dined three or four times with
old Major Pratt."

"As if she would notice it!--servants never notice anything!" thought