"

"No, I shall let it if I can."

"Oh, you will have no difficulty in doing that. People live in Russell
Square again now, and try to make one believe that it is a fashionable
quarter. Your father stayed on there because the carpets fitted the
rooms, and on account of other ancestral conveniences. He did not
live there--he knew nothing of his immediate environments. He lived in
Phoenicia."

"Then," continued Guy Oscard, "I shall go abroad."

"Ah! Will you have a second cup? Why will you go abroad?"

Guy Oscard paused for a moment. "I know an old hippopotamus in a certain
African river who has twice upset me. I want to go back and shoot him."

"Don't go at once; that would be running away from it--not from the
hippopotamus--from the inquest. It does not matter being upset in an
African river; but you must not be upset in London by--an inquest."

"I did not propose going at once," replied Guy Oscard, with a peculiar
smile which Lady Cantourne thought she understood. "It will take me some
time to set my affairs in order--the will, and all that."

Lady Cantourne waited with perfectly suppressed curiosity, and while
she was waiting Millicent Chyne came into the room. The girl was dressed
with her habitual perfect taste and success, and she came forward with
a smile of genuine pleasure, holding out a small hand neatly gloved in
Suede. Her ladyship was looking not at Millicent, but at Guy Oscard.

Millicent was glad that he had called, and said so. She did not add that
during the three months that had elapsed since Jack Meredith's sudden
departure she had gradually recognised the approaching ebb of a very
full tide of popularity. It was rather dull at times, when Jack's
letters arrived at intervals of two and sometimes of three weeks--when
her girl friends allowed her to see somewhat plainly that she was no
longer to be counted as one of themselves. An engagement sits as it were
on a young lady like a weak heart on a schoolboy, setting her apart in
work and play, debarring her from participation in that game of life
which is ever going forward where young folks do congregate.

Moreover, she liked Guy Oscard. He aroused her curiosity. There was
something in him--something which she vaguely suspected to be connected
with herself--which she wanted to drag out and examine. She possessed
more than the usual allowance of curiosity--which is saying a good deal;
for one may take it that the beginning of all things in the fe