HOW A DULL MORNING GIVES BIRTH TO A STRANGE AFTERNOON.

AND HOW RYLTON'S EYES ARE WIDENED BY A FRIEND.
"Good old day!" says Mrs.Chichester disgustedly.

She is sitting near the window in the small drawing-room at Oakdean, watching the raindrops race each other down the panes.
"What's the matter with it ?" asks Mr.Gower, who is standing beside her, much to the annoyance of Captain Marryatt, who is anxious to engage her for some waltzes at the dance old Lady Warbeck is giving in the near future.
"What _isn't_ the matter with it ?" asks Mrs.Chichester, turning her thin shoulders, that always have some queer sort of fascination in them, on Gower.

She gives him a glance out of her blue-green eyes.
She is enjoying herself immensely, in spite of the day, being quite alive to the fact that Captain Marryatt is growing desperate, and that old Miss Gower, whom Tita has insisted on asking to her house party, is thinking dark things of her from the ottoman over there.
"What's it good for, any way ?" "For the ducks," says Mr.Gower, who is always there.

An answer to any question under the sun comes as naturally to him as sighing to the sad.
"Oh, well, I'm not a duck," says she prettily; whereupon Mr.Gower whispers something to her that makes her laugh, and drives Captain Marryatt to frenzy.
He comes forward.
"Lady Rylton is talking of getting up something to pass the time;" says he, regarding Mrs.Chichester with a frowning brow--a contortion that fills that frivolous young woman's breast with pure joy.
"May the heavens be her bed!" says Mr.Gower, who has spent some years in Ireland, and has succeeded in studying the lower orders with immense advantage to himself, but not very much to others.