tish
workman who reads the halfpenny evening paper. That is fame--those are
politics."

She laughed. There seemed to be no fear of her taking life too seriously
yet. And, truth to tell, he did not appear to wish her to do so.

"But you must not go very far," she said sweetly.

"Africa."

"Africa? That does not sound interesting."

"It is interesting: moreover, it is the coming country. I may be able to
make money out there, and money is a necessity at present."

"I do not like it, Jack," she said in a foreboding voice. "When do you
go?"

"At once--in fact, I came to say good-bye. It is better to do these
things very promptly--to disappear before the onlookers have quite
understood what is happening. When they begin to understand they begin
to interfere. They cannot help it. I will write to Lady Cantourne if you
like."

"No, I will tell her."

So he bade her good-bye, and those things that lovers say were duly
said; but they are not for us to chronicle. Such words are better left
to be remembered or forgotten as time and circumstance and result may
decree. For one may never tell what words will do when they are laid
within the years like the little morsel of leaven that leaveneth the
whole.

CHAPTER IV. A TRAGEDY

Who knows? the man is proven by the hour.

In his stately bedroom on the second floor of the quietest house in
Russell Square Mr. Thomas Oscard--the eccentric Oscard--lay, perhaps,
a-dying.

Thomas Oscard had written the finest history of an extinct people that
had ever been penned; and it has been decreed that he who writes a
fine history or paints a fine picture can hardly be too eccentric. Our
business, however, does not lie in the life of this historian--a life
which certain grave wiseacres from the West End had shaken their
heads over a few hours before we find him lying prone on a four-poster
counting for the thousandth time the number of tassels fringing the
roof of it. In bold contradiction to the medical opinion, the nurse was,
however, hopeful. Whether this comforting condition of mind arose from
long experience of the ways of doctors, or from an acquired philosophy,
it is not our place to inquire. But that her opinion was sincere is
not to be doubted. She had, as a matter of fact, gone to the pantomime,
leaving the patient under the immediate eye of his son, Guy Oscard.

The temporary nurse was sitting in a cretonne-covered armchair, with a
book of travel on his knee,