ht of your going
up to Borva. If you should go--"

"Of course I sha'n't go," said the other promptly. "How could I face
Mackenzie when he began to ask me about Sheila? No, I cannot go to Borva
while this affair remains in its present condition; and, indeed,
Lavender, I mean to stop in London till I see you out of your trouble
somehow."

"You are heaping coals of fire on my head."

"Oh, don't look at it that way. If I can be of any help to you, I shall
expect, this time, to have a return for it."

"What do you mean?"

"I will tell you when we get to know something of Sheila's intentions."

And so Frank Lavender found himself once more, as in the old times, in
the Euston Station, with the Scotch mail ready to start, and all manner
of folks bustling about with that unnecessary activity which betokens
the excitement of a holiday. What a strange holiday was his! He got into
a smoking-carriage in order to be alone, and he looked out on the people
who were bidding their friends good-bye. Some of them were not very
pretty, many of them were ordinary, insignificant, commonplace-looking
folks, but it was clear that they had those about them who loved them
and thought much of them. There was one man whom, in other
circumstances, Lavender would have dismissed with contempt as an
excellent specimen of the unmitigated cad. He wore a white waistcoat,
purple gloves and a green sailor's knot with a diamond in it, and there
was a cheery, vacuous, smiling expression on his round face as he
industriously smoked a cheroot and made small jokes to the friends who
had come to see him off. One of them was a young woman, not very good
looking perhaps, who did not join in the general hilarity; and it
occurred to Lavender that the jovial man with the cheroot was perhaps
cracking his little jokes to keep up her spirits. At all events, he
called her "my good lass" from time to time, and patted her on the
shoulder, and was very kind to her. And when the guard came up and bade
everybody get in, the man kissed the girl and shook hands with her and
bade her good-bye; and then she, moved by some sudden impulse, caught
his face in both her hands and kissed him once on each cheek. It was a
ridiculous scene. People who wear green ties with diamond pins care
nothing for decorum. And yet Lavender, when he averted his eyes from
this parting, could not help recalling what Ingram had been saying the
night before, and wondered whether this outrageous perso