It was not far from Christmas when Anthony returned from his cruise, which he did in a listless, yawning, world-weary frame of mind. He had not enjoyed himself as he had expected to do, and wished he had remained in Melbourne at work, and given his old father a holiday instead. Tasmania had looked beautiful, to be sure, but he had seen too many things that were more so, and seen them too recently, to be impressed by its hills and streams; while the sea had no charm after his recent voyage. He had wholly depended on his company for entertainment, and his company had disappointed him. Few, indeed, can stand the test of such conditions as those under which they were expected to shine, as under a microscope, with double lustre and meaning (he had not stood it himself); and it was not surprising that the brilliant Lady Louisa had failed to substantiate her pretensions to be a clever woman, or that Mrs. Churchill had contrived to make a most kindly-disposed stepson hate her. Not, of course, that it was necessary for Lady Louisa to show herself clever in order to captivate our hero, or any man; it was because her stupidity had led her to waste her blandishments on a brainless idiot of a whisky-drinking globe-trotter, whose name was his only title to be called a gentleman, that it had manifested itself so unmistakably to her superseded slave. When the bookless, newspaperless, trifling time was over, he stepped ashore with a sense of being released from an irksome bondage, and determined to keep clear of his late too close companions for many a long day. One only was excepted—an old chum and crony, who had accompanied him on the voyage from England, a Queensland squatter, who lived nine months of the year in Melbourne—Adam Danesbury by name. Mr. Danesbury had afforded much amusement on board the yacht by boasting modestly of his recent engagement to a girl at home; showing her likeness, worn in a locket on his watch-chain, to the ladies, and confiding to them his plan for returning to marry and fetch her out as soon as he had got his northern shearing over. The ladies thought it was so very funny of him; any other man, they said, would have kept such a thing as dark as possible, under the circumstances. But Anthony Churchill, who had always made a friend of Danesbury, had never liked him so well as he liked him now.

"Come up to my place and dine with me to-night," he said to him, as the party were dispersing in the yard of the railway station; "and let's have a quiet pipe and a little peace, after all this racket."

"All right," said Mr. Danesbury, "I'm on."

They spoke in low tones, like a couple of conspirators.

"Mr. Churchill! Mr. Churchill!" called Lady Louisa from a Government House carriage, to which a callow aide had escorted her. "What have I done that I should be neglected in this manner? Are you not even going to say good-bye to me?"

Anthony advanced with his man-of-the-world courtliness, and pressed her outstretched hand. "No," he said, "I never mean to say good-bye to you—until I am obliged."

"Au revoir, then," she laughed. "You will come and see me soon?"

He bowed as to a queen, while the young A.D.C., whose enchantress she was at the moment, notwithstanding the fact that she was almost old enough to be his mother, glared ferociously.

"These conceited colonials!" he muttered to himself; "these trading cads, putting on the airs of gentlemen! What presumption of the fellow to speak in that tone to HER!"

"Tony," cried Maude, from the midst of her bags and bundles, which her maid was counting into the hands of a cabman, "you will see me safe home, Tony?"

"Well, really, Maude, I don't see how you can help getting home safely, with your own husband to take care of you," Tony replied, a little irritably (his father, delighted to get his young wife back again, was calling her carriage up). "You don't want me now."

"Tony, you know I always want you. And you might come just for a cup of tea and to see the children. They'll be expecting you."

"I'll see them on Sunday. I must go home and get washed and decent."

"As if you couldn't get washed in our house, where you've got your own rooms, and dozens of suits of clothes lying in your drawers!"

"Oh, I know; but you must excuse me now, really. There'll be letters and all sorts of things at my chambers, waiting for me, and I telegraphed to Jarvis to have my dinner ready."

He detached himself from her clutches, and, when her carriage drove off, called up his hansom and flung himself into it with a sigh of relief. "Thank God, that's over!" he ejaculated, drawing his cigar-case from his pocket. "What fools women are! The more I see of them, the more sick of them I get."

It was great luxury to find himself in his own bachelor home, where the priceless Jarvis had everything in order and ready for him, and where he was his own man, as he could never be elsewhere. He had an iced drink, and read his letters, and glanced at half a dozen newspapers, lolling bare-armed upon a sofa, with a pipe in his mouth and slippered feet in the air; and then he had a bath and elaborately dressed himself, putting a silk coat over his diamond-studded shirt; and Jarvis set the dainty dinner-table, and Danesbury arrived.

"Come in, old fellow!" shouted the emancipated one, hearing his friend in the hall. "Now we'll enjoy ourselves! Take off that black coat—no ladies to consider now; we may as well be cool and comfortable when we do get the chance. Dinner ready, Jarvis? All's vanity and vexation of spirit, old man, except one's dinner. Thank God, we've still got that to fall back upon!"

"We've got something more than that to fall back upon, let us hope," said Mr. Danesbury, smiling. "At any rate, I have."

"Oh, you! You've got Miss Lennox to fall back on, of course. But we are not all so lucky."

"What's happened to you, that you should class yourself with the unlucky ones? But I know; Lady Louisa hasn't appreciated you. I can quite understand that you feel bad about it, being so little accustomed to such treatment."

"Hang Lady Louisa! A battered old campaigner, with no more heart or brains than a Dutch doll! I should be sorry to feel bad over a woman of that sort."

"What then?"

"Lord knows. A troubled conscience, perhaps, for having wasted so much valuable time. Dinner, as I said before, will restore me. Sit down."

They sat down, and did justice to Jarvis's preparations. Anthony's little dinners were famous amongst dining men, who knew better than to disturb enjoyment and digestion with too much conversation while they were in progress; but when this meal had reached the stage of coffee and cigarettes, the two friends fell into very confidential talk.

"What you want," said Adam Danesbury, "is to get married, Tony."

"Why," said the host, "you've been the loudest of us all in denouncing those bonds—till now. Because you've lost your tail, is that any reason why we should cut off ours?"

"That's all very well while we're young and foolish," said Mr. Danesbury sedately (he was a sedate person always, but "a devil of a fellow," all the same, at times). "And I denounce the thing still, when it's nothing but a buying and selling business, like what we so often see. But get a good girl, Tony—a girl like my girl—one who doesn't make a bargain of you, but loves the ground you walk on, though you may go barefoot—then it's all right. Think of our advanced age, if you please. Byron was in the sere and yellow leaf before he was as old as I am, and you are close up. Twenty years hence we shall be old fogies, and we shall have lost our appetite for cakes, if not for ale, and they will shunt us into corners; then we shall want our girls and boys to ruffle it in our place. If we don't look sharp, those girls and boys won't be there, Tony, and it will feel lonely—I know it will."

"These be the words of wisdom," said Tony reflectively. "I must confess I had forgotten about the girls and boys."

"Oh, but, apart from them, it's a mistake to put it off, after a certain time of life—that is, of course, if you can find the right sort of woman. For God's sake, don't go and throw yourself away on one of these society girls. What a fellow wants is a home, and they don't seem to know the meaning of the word."

"How would you describe the right sort of woman?" asked Anthony, pushing the wine towards his friend.

"I would say, a woman like Rose Lennox."

"Yes, of course—naturally. Only, unfortunately, I don't know Miss Lennox."

"I wish you did, Tony. If you had come down to my father's place, as I wanted you to, you would have met her. However, you will see her before long, I trust."

Anthony spread his arms over the table, and looked curiously at the man in whom Miss Lennox had wrought so great a change.

"Tell me about her, will you, old fellow?" he said. "Tell me, so that I may know what the right woman is like, when I do happen to see her."

Mr. Danesbury was nothing loth. He, too, spread his arms on the table, with an air of preparation, having placed his unconsumed cigarette in the ash-tray beside him.

"Well, in the first place, I must tell you she is poor," he began. "But she's none the worse for that."

"No, the better—the better!" cried Anthony, delighted. "I believe it's just money that spoils them all."

"Though she's poor, she's the most perfect lady that ever stepped."

The host nodded comprehendingly.

"Her father has the parish next to my father's; old Lennox got the living after I left home. It's supposed to be worth two-fifty, but if he gets two it's as much as he does; and there are seven children. My Rose is the eldest—twenty-three next birthday."

"Yes?" Anthony had left off smoking, and was listening as men seldom listened to this love-sick swain.

"The way I knew her first—my sisters gave a garden party—you know those little clerical garden parties?—parsons and their wives and daughters from miles round, coming in their washed frocks and their little basket carriages; and two of the Lennox girls were there—nice, interesting little things, but not Rose. We had three tennis afternoons before I knew of her existence. I used to hear my sisters say, 'Why don't you make Rose come?' but never took any heed; until one day I had to drive some of them home, because a storm was coming, and they hadn't any carriage; and just as I got there the storm burst, and I went in to wait till it was over. And there I saw that girl—my Rose—sitting at a table, mending stockings, with half a dozen little brats saying their lessons to her. This was what she did every day—sewed, and kept house, and taught the children, while her sisters went out to play tennis. She said it was so good for them to have a little recreation—as if she wasn't to be thought of at all. That's the sort of woman she is."

Anthony stretched out his hand. "Show me that locket again, will you?"

Adam Danesbury detached watch and chain, and pushed them over the table. "It don't do her justice," he said tenderly. "She's got hair that you can see yourself in, and a complexion like milk; the colour comes and goes with every word you say to her, and her expression changes in the same way. Photography always fails with people of that sort. Still—there she is."

Photography had evidently not done justice to Miss Lennox. The ladies on the yacht had called her dowdy, and insignificant, and plain, wondering at Mr. Danesbury's taste; but, helped by that gentleman's description of her, Anthony made out a sweet and modest face, which held his gaze for several minutes. Her lover watched him eagerly—this accomplished connoisseur—and swelled with pride to see her so appreciated.

"Well?" he said challengingly.

"Well," said Anthony, as he snapped the locket, "she's a charming creature, and you are an enviable fellow."

"I am that," rejoined the lover, re-opening the case before hanging it to his button-hole. "And I shall be a great deal more enviable this time next year, please God."