yellow roses?"

He flings himself into an easy-chair before the fire, throws back his
blonde head, and stretches forth his boots to the blaze.

"An hour after time, am I not? But blame the railway people--don't
blame _me_. Beastly sort of weather for the last week of August--cold
as Iceland and raining cats and dogs; the very dickens of a storm,
I can tell you."

He give the fire a poke, the light leaps up and illumines his handsome
face. He is very like his picture--a little older--a little
worn-looking, and with man's "crowning glory," a mustache. The girl
has moved a little away from him, the flush of "beauty's bright
transcient glow" has died out of her face, the hard, angry look has
come back. That careless kiss, that easy, cousinly embrace, have told
their story. A moment ago her heart beat high with hope--to the day of
her death it never beat like that again.

He doesn't look at her; he gazes at the fire instead, and talks with
the hurry of a nervous man. The handsome face is a very effeminate
face, and not even the light, carefully trained, carefully waxed
mustache can hide the weak, irresolute mouth, the delicate,
characterless chin. While he talks carelessly and quickly, while his
slim white fingers loop and unloop his watch-chain, in the blue eyes
fixed upon the fire there is an uneasy look of nervous fear. And into
the keeping of this man the girl with the dark powerful face has given
her heart, her fate!

"It seems no end good to be at home again," Sir Victor Catheron says,