ck
didn't force me to wring his neck. But I shall be very lonely--nobody
comes here--well, not many are invited! Will you drop in on the exile
and smoke a pipe now and then after dinner?"

"Oh, yes, I'll look you up." My tone was impatient, I know: his
burlesque was neither intelligible nor grateful to me.

"After dinner, if that suits you. I'm going to take advantage of my
solitude to work in the daytime. The door will be barred till nine
o'clock."

I nodded--and looked at my watch.

"Yes," said Jenny, "we must be going. Everything's settled, Austin,
and--and Mr. Octon has been very kind."

"I'm glad to hear that anyhow," I said grumpily. If he had been kind,
why had I heard that wail?

In fact I was thoroughly puzzled--and therefore both vexed and uneasy.
He accepted his banishment--and yet was friendly. That result seemed a
great victory for Jenny--yet she did not look victorious. It was Octon
who wore the air of exultation and self-satisfaction; yet he had been
thrown to the wolves, abandoned to the pack of Fillingfords and
Aspenicks. Well, that could not be the whole truth of it, though what
more there might be I could not guess.

He came with us down the gravel path which led from the hall door to the
road, where the brougham was waiting. Jenny pointed across the
road--where Ivydene stood with its strip of garden.

"That's the house I meant, you know," she said, evidently referring to
something that had passed in their private conversation.

He stood smiling at her, with his hands in his pockets. He really was,
for him, ridiculously amiable, though his amiability, like everything
else about him, was rough, almost boisterous.

"If you must go on with your beastly Institute," he said, "and must have
a beastly house for a beastly office, to make your beastly plans and do
your other beastly work in, why, I daresay that beastly house will do as
well as any other beastly house for your beastly purpose. Only do choose
beastly clerks, or whatever they're going to be, who haven't got any
beastly children to play beastly games and make a beastly noise in the
garden."

Quite the first I had heard of this idea! Quite the first time, too,
that Leonard Octon had been so agreeable--he meant to be agreeable,
though the humor was like a schoolboy's--about the Institute!

"I think I'll speak to Mr. Bindlecombe about it," said Jenny, as she
gave him her hand. Her farewell was more than gracious; it was grateful,
it w