ed towards Lord Lackington. Mr. Montresor started. The eyes of
both men travelled across the table, then met again.

"You know?" said Montresor, under his breath.

Sir Wilfrid nodded. Then some instinct told him that he had now
exhausted the number of the initiated.

* * * * *

When the men reached the drawing-room, which was rather emptily waiting
for the "reception" Mrs. Montresor was about to hold in it, Sir Wilfrid
fell into conversation with Lord Lackington. The old man talked well,
though flightily, with a constant reference of all topics to his own
standards, recollections, and friendships, which was characteristic, but
in him not unattractive. Sir Wilfrid noticed certain new and pitiful
signs of age. The old man was still a rattle. But every now and then the
rattle ceased abruptly and a breath of melancholy made itself felt--like
a chill and sudden gust from some unknown sea.

They were joined presently, as the room filled up, by a young
journalist--an art critic, who seemed to know Lord Lackington and his
ways. The two fell eagerly into talk about pictures, especially of an
exhibition at Antwerp, from which the young man had just returned.

"I looked in at Bruges on the way back for a few hours," said the
new-comer, presently. "The pictures there are much better seen than they
used to be. When were you there last?" He turned to Lord Lackington.

"Bruges?" said Lord Lackington, with a start. "Oh, I haven't been there
for twenty years."

And he suddenly sat down, dangling a paper-knife between his hands, and
staring at the carpet. His jaw dropped a little. A cloud seemed to
interpose between him and his companions.

Sir Wilfrid, with Lady Henry's story fresh in his memory, was somehow
poignantly conscious of the old man. Did their two minds hold the same
image--of Lady Rose drawing her last breath in some dingy room beside
one of the canals that wind through Bruges, laying down there the last
relics of that life, beauty, and intelligence that had once made her the
darling of the father, who, for some reason still hard to understand,
had let her suffer and die alone?

V

On leaving the Montresors, Sir Wilfrid, seeing that it was a fine night
with mild breezes abroad, refused a hansom, and set out to walk home to
his rooms in Duke Street, St. James's. He was so much in love with the
mere streets, the mere clatter of the omnibuses and shimmer of the
lamps, after his lo