PAUL BEEVER was tall and fat, and his eyes, like his mother’s, were very small; but more even than to his mother nature had offered him a compensation for this defect in the extension of the rest of the face. He had large, bare, beardless cheeks and a wide, clean, candid mouth, which the length of the smooth upper lip caused to look as exposed as a bald head. He had a deep fold of flesh round his uncovered young neck, and his white flannels showed his legs to be all the way down of the same thickness. He promised to become massive early in life and even to attain a remarkable girth. His great tastes were for cigarettes and silence; but he was, in spite of his proportions, neither gross nor lazy. If he was indifferent to his figure he was equally so to his food, and he played cricket with his young towns men and danced hard with their wives and sisters. Wilverley liked him and Tony Bream thought well of him: it was only his mother who had not yet made up her mind. He had done a good deal at Oxford in not doing any harm, and he had subse quently rolled round the globe in the very groove with which she had belted it. But it was exactly in satisfying that he a little disappointed her: she had provided so against dangers that she found it a trifle dull to be so completely safe. It had become with her a question not of how clever he was, but of how stupid. Tony had expressed the view that he was distinctly deep, but that might only have been, in Tony’s florid way, to show that he himself was so. She would not have found it convenient to have to give the boy an account of Mr. Vidal; but now that, detached from her purposes and respect ful of her privacies, he sat there without making an inquiry, she was disconcerted enough slightly to miss the opportunity to snub him. On this occa sion, however, she could steady herself with the possibility that her hour would still come. He began to eat a bun his row justified that; and meanwhile she helped him to his tea. As she handed him the cup she challenged him with some sharpness. “ Pray, when are you going to give it? ”

He slowly masticated while he looked at her. “When do you think I had better? ”

“Before dinner distinctly. One doesn’t know what may happen.”

“Do you think anything at all will?” he placidly asked.

His mother waited before answering. “ Nothing, certainly, unless you take some trouble for it.” His perception of what she meant by this was clearly wanting, so that after a moment she con tinued: “ You don’t seem to grasp that I’ve done for you all I can do, and that the rest now depends on yourself.”

“Oh yes, mother, I grasp it,” he said without irritation. He took another bite of his bun and then added: “ Miss Armiger has made me quite do that.”

“Miss Armiger?” Mrs. Beever stared; she even felt that her opportunity was at hand. “ What in the world has she to do with the matter? ”

“Why I’ve talked to her a lot about it.”

“You mean she has talked to you a lot, I suppose. It’s immensely like her.”

“It’s like my dear mamma that’s whom it’s like,” said Paul. “ She takes just the same view as yourself. I mean the view that I’ve a great opening and that I must make a great effort.”

“And don’t you see that for yourself? Do you require a pair of women to tell you?” Mrs. Beever asked.

Paul, looking grave and impartial, turned her question over while he stirred the tea. “No, not exactly. But Miss Armiger puts everything so well.”

“She puts some things doubtless beautifully. Still, I should like you to be conscious of some better reason for making yourself acceptable to Jean than that another young woman, however brilliant, recommends it.”

The young man continued to ruminate, and it occurred to his mother, as it had occurred before, that his imperturbability was perhaps a strength. “I am,” he said at last. “ She seems to make clear to me what I feel.”

Mrs. Beever wondered. “You mean of course Jean does.”

“Dear no Miss Armiger! ”

The lady of Eastmead laughed out in her impatience. “ I’m delighted to hear you feel any thing. You haven’t often seemed to me to feel.”

“I feel that Jean’s very charming.”

She laughed again at the way he made it sound. “Is that the tone in which you think of telling her so?”

“I think she’ll take it from me in any tone,” Paul replied. “ She has always been most kind to me; we’re very good friends, and she knows what I want.”

“It’s more than I do, my dear! That’s exactly what you said to me six months ago when she liked you so much that she asked you to let her alone,”

“She asked me to give her six months for a definite answer, and she likes me the more for having consented to do that,” said Paul. “The time I’ve waited has improved our relations.”

“Well, then, they now must have reached per fection. You’ll get her definite answer, therefore, this very afternoon.”

“When I present the ornament? ”

“When you present the ornament. You’ve got it safe, I hop............