curiously. Mr. Lennox stopped twisting the corkscrew into the bottle, and
the low comedian, seizing the opportunity, murmured in his mechanical voice
to the girl behind him, 'Open house! Of course, she's quite right. I knew
there was a draught somewhere; I felt my hair blowing about.'

Everybody laughed, and the merriment still contributed to discountenance
the workwoman.

'Will he never speak and let me go?' she asked herself. At last he did
speak, and his words fell upon her like blows.

'I don't know what you mean, Mrs. Ede,' he said in a loud, commanding
voice. 'I made no agreement with you that I wasn't to bring friends home
with me in the evening. Had I known that I was taking lodgings in a church
I wouldn't have come.'

She felt dreadfully humiliated, and nothing was really present in her mind
but a desire to conciliate Mr. Lennox.

'It isn't my fault, sir. I really don't mind; but my mother-in-law and my
husband won't have people coming into the house after ten o'clock.'

Mr. Lennox's face showed that his heart had softened towards her, and when
she mentioned that her husband was lying ill in bed, turning round to his
company, he said:

'I think we are making too much noise; we shouldn't like it ourselves if--'

But just at that moment, when all was about to end pleasantly, Mrs. Ede was
heard at the top of the stairs.