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ferent fashion. ‘If Mr. Donaldson doesn’t take it the way it’s
meant he can take himself off, and good riddance.’
Philip thought it was a severe ordeal that the young man
was being exposed to, since Athelny, in his brown velvet
jacket, flowing black tie, and red tarboosh, was a startling
spectacle for an innocent electrical engineer. When he
came he was greeted by his host with the proud courtesy
of a Spanish grandee and by Mrs. Athelny in an altogeth-
er homely and natural fashion. They sat down at the old
ironing-table in the high-backed monkish chairs, and Mrs.
Athelny poured tea out of a lustre teapot which gave a note of
England and the country-side to the festivity. She had made
little cakes with her own hand, and on the table was home-
made jam. It was a farm-house tea, and to Philip very quaint
and charming in that Jacobean house. Athelny for some
fantastic reason took it into his head to discourse upon Byz-
antine history; he had been reading the later volumes of the
Decline and Fall; and, his forefinger dramatically extended,
he poured into the astonished ears of the suitor scandalous
stories about Theodora and Irene. He addressed himself di-
rectly to his guest with a torrent of rhodomontade; and the
young man, reduced to helpless silence and shy, nodded his
head at intervals to show that he took an intelligent interest.
Mrs. Athelny paid no attention to Thorpe’s conversation,
but interrupted now and then to offer the young man more
tea or to press upon him cake and jam. Philip watched Sal-
ly; she sat with downcast eyes, calm, silent, and observant;
and her long eye-lashes cast a pretty shadow on her cheek.
You could not tell whether she was amused at the scene or if

Of Human Bondage