A few days later the Gaddesdens were in town, settled in a house in Portman Square.

Philip was increasingly ill, and moreover shrouded in a bitterness of spirit which wrung his mother's heart.

She suspected a new cause for it in the fancy that he had lately taken for Alice Lucas, the girl in the white chiffon, who had piped to Mariette in vain.

Not that he ever now wanted to see her.

He had passed into a phase indeed of refusing all society--except that of George Anderson.