family, being somewhat original, gave queer names to their belongings; and since they were children the old couch had been called "Grumps," tired hands and tired limbs and aching hearts always finding it a comfortable refuge.

"So I will, dear," returned Mr. Ward; and then both the girls hung about him and kissed him, and Mollie brushed back his hair, and put a rose in his buttonhole; but Waveney only sat down beside him and held his hand silently.

There was no difficulty in discovering where Noel got his good looks. In his youth Everard Ward had been considered so handsome that artists had implored him to sit to them; and for many years well-principled heads of girls' colleges feared to engage him as drawing-master.

And even now, in spite of the tired eyes and careworn expression, and the haggardness brought on by the tension of over-work and late hours, the face was almost perfect, only the fair hair had worn off the forehead and was becoming a little grey—"pepper and salt," Mollie called it. But the thing that struck strangers most was his air of refinement, in spite of his shabby coat and old hat; no one could deny that he was a gentleman; and in this they were right.

Everard Ward was a man who if he had mixed in society would have made many friends. In the old days he had been dearly loved and greatly admired; but just when his prospects were brightest and the future seemed gilded with success, he suddenly took the bit between his teeth and bolted—not down hill; his mother's sweet memory and his own dignity prevented that—but across country, down side roads that had no thoroughfare, and which landed him in bogs of difficulty.

For in spite of his soft heart and easy good-nature Everard was always offending people; his wealthy godfather, for example, when he refused to take orders and to be inducted into a family living; and again his sole remaining relative, an uncle, who wished him to go into the War Office.

"Life is an awful muddle," he would say sometimes; but in reality he made his own difficulties. His last act of youthful madness was when he left the Stock Exchange, where an old friend of his father had given him a berth, and had joined a set of young artistic Bohemians.

At that time he was supposed by his friends to be on the brink of an engagement to an heiress, he had seemed warmly attached to her, until at a ball he met Dorothy Sinclair, and fell desperately in love with her.

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