ee
me soon. I am an old woman, my friend, and I have outlived my
generation. I have said too many good-byes in my time. It is _au
revoir_."

"With all my heart," he said, smiling. "_Au revoir_."

Her quaint intimation--that was the manner in which he characterized
it--was already dismissed from his mind when he emerged into the
street.

He had too many graver preoccupations to be greatly troubled by this
grotesque slander. Going on his way, however--a temporary cessation
of the soft, persistent rain which had been falling for most of the
day suggested a walk--a chance recollection brought him to a sudden
stop, changing his indifference for a moment into the shadow of pale
indignation. How dull of him not to have guessed at once! it must be
that unfortunate girl, Kitty Crichton, with whom busybodies were
associating his name. He wondered how they had discovered her, and
by whom the stupid story had been set afloat. The baselessness of
the scandal, conjoined with his immense apathy just then as to
anything more that the malice of men could do, inclined him to
amusement, the more so as he reflected how many months it was since
the girl and her wretched history had passed from his ken. He had
found her gone on his return from Italy in the spring, leaving no
address and but the briefest acknowledgment of his good-will in a
note, which stated that she had no longer any excuse for imposing on
his kindness--had found friends. The letter closed, as he imagined,
a painful history, which, since his service had been, after all, so
fruitless, he could see ended with relief. To his interpretation,
the girl had recovered her scoundrel journalist, or at least
compelled him to contribute to her support; and after all, as it
seemed, he had not done with her yet, though the fashion of her
return was ghostly and immaterial enough. The subject galled him;
there were always dim possibilities lurking in the background of it
which he refused to contemplate; he dismissed it. His meditation had
carried him through the bustle of Oxford Street to the Marble Arch,
and, the weather still encouraging him, he decided to turn into the
Park. Many rainy days had made the air exceedingly soft, and in his
enjoyment of this unusual quality, and of the strangely sweet odour
of the wet earth and mildewing leaves, he forgot for a while a
certain momentous sentence of Sir Egbert Rome's, which had jingled
in his head all that afternoon. Presently it tripped