whenever he saw her thin, eager face, or listened to the insistent tones of her reed-like voice, which made itself constantly heard at any public gathering.

John Musgrave was not thinking of this lady as he sat at breakfast and poured himself out a cup of coffee from the old-fashioned urn that had graced the table every morning within his memory; but the return of Eliza, like an austere Flora, whose sour visage showed above a basket of hot-house fruits hiding shyly beneath a profusion of wax-like blossoms, brought her promptly and most unpleasantly to his mind. Only one person in Moresby could send him such a gift. He turned purple in the face when he beheld this dainty offering of fruit and flowers, and spluttered with rage as he waved their approach aside.

“Take away that—that rubbish,” he commanded fiercely. “How dare you bring it in here!”

Eliza stared at him resentfully. She did not show surprise, because that was an emotion she seldom displayed, but she disapproved highly of his tone.

“I did not know what else to do with it, sir,” she answered.

“No, no; of course not.” John Musgrave seized an egg, and decapitated it with a shaking hand. “Take it with you, please,” he said, in a mollified voice.

“Oh, thank you, sir,” Eliza murmured, with a twist of her thin lips which was the only trick of smiling they knew.

He turned in his seat and stared at her fixedly.

“Tell Martha from me,” he said curtly, “to throw that litter on the fire. I don’t like cut flowers, and I do not eat fruit. If—if anything else of the kind arrives, do not take it in.”

Eliza carried the rejected offering with her to the kitchen, where Martha and the chauffeur lingered over a late breakfast, and simperingly displayed the gift which she bore in the angular crook of her arm.

“The master gave them to me,” she announced, with the conscious intonation of one marked out for especial favour.

The chauffeur was in the act of drinking coffee, but something went wrong with his throat at this moment, and Eliza, who was fastidious, turned aside from the unpleasant spectacle he presented, and buried her nose in the flowers. Martha good-naturedly thumped him on the back.

“Oh Lord?” he gasped. “Oh Lord?”

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