you'll go back and settle down comfortably with Enid. You see, the thing is really arranged."

"Oh—nonsense!" exclaimed Gilbert impatiently. "That was a boy and girl affair—a sort of arrangement made between our people, years and years ago. Besides, suppose I don't want to settle down—what then?"

"They'll make you; they'll persuade you," said Mr. Tant gloomily. "Mrs. Ewart-Crane is a[60] mother, and has one thought in her mind, and one only—Enid's future. You'll simply be told that you've got to get married. After that, perhaps, they'll let you run about as much as you like—that is, within limits."

[60]

"We shall see about that," said his friend. "By the way, what are you doing to-night? We might dine together."

"I am taking Enid and her mother to dinner and to the theatre," said Mr. Tant with dignity. "Perhaps you'd like to suggest that you will go too?"

"Certainly," said Gilbert, with alacrity. "Most kind of you; I'll join you with pleasure."

"I knew it!" Mr. Jordan Tant threw up his hands in a sort of comical despair. "I can see myself escorting Mrs. Ewart-Crane all the evening, and compelled to be polite while inwardly boiling. It's a very unfair world."

Just as Gilbert was going Mr. Tant called him back, to deliver a word of warning. "Understand me clearly, Byfield," he said, "I will not have you springing in suddenly in any dramatic fashion. You shall be announced in a commonplace way—your return referred to as something quite of an ordinary kind. I will fetch the ladies this evening, but I shall tell them that you await us at the restaurant. There shall be no surprises."

"I don't want any surprises," said Gilbert, laughing.

Despite all his precautions, Mr. Tant found himself as usual very much in the background when it came to that moment of meeting between the gentleman from Arcadia Street and Mrs. Ewart-Crane[61] and her daughter. Mr. Tant had made all arrangements for a very excellent dinner; and he endeavoured, with what dignity he might, to take the head of affairs. But Enid was anxious to know everything concerning a certain Arcadia Street that had been spoken of, and she leaned eagerly towards Gilbert, demanding to know what he had been doing, and if it was really true that he had lived among people who were a sort of savages—and what he had had to eat, and how he had managed to live at all.

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