d of
the wild conditions on which her hand was to be won. 'And as to her
heart, I think,' he added, 'if you pull off the prize--

If my heart by signs can tell,
Lordling, I have marked her daily,
And I think she loves thee well.'

'Thank you for that, old cock,' replied the peer, shaking Merton's hand.
He had recovered from his emotion.

'I'm on,' he added, after a moment's silence, 'but I shall enter as Jones
Harvey.'

'His name and his celebrated papers will impress the trustees,' said
Merton. 'Now what variety of nature shall you go for? Wild _men_ count.
Shall you fetch a Berbalang of what do you call it?'

Bude shuddered. 'Not much,' he said. 'I think I shall fetch a Moa.'

'But no steamer could hold that gigantic denizen of the forests.'

'You leave that to Jones Harvey. Jones is 'cute, some,' he said,
reminiscent of the adored one, and he fell into a lover's reverie.

He was aroused by Merton's departure: he finished the Apollinaris water,
took a bath, and went to bed.

II. The Adventure of the Muddy Pearls

The Earl of Bude had meant to lay his heart, coronet, and other
possessions, real and personal, before the tiny feet of the fair American
at Goodwood. But when he learned from Merton the involvements of this
heiress and paragon, that her hand depended on the choice of the people,
that the choice of the people was to settle on the adventurer who brought
to New York the rarest of nature's varieties, the earl honourably held
his peace. Yet he and the object of his love were constantly meeting, on
the yachts and in the country houses of their friends, the aristocracy,
and, finally, at shooting lodges in the Highlands. Their position, as
the Latin Delectus says concerning the passion of love in general, was 'a
strange thing, and full of anxious fears.' Bude could not declare
himself, and Miss McCabe, not knowing that he knew her situation, was
constantly wondering why he did not speak. Between fear of letting her
secret show itself in a glance or a blush and hope of listening to the
words which she desired to hear, even though she could not answer them as
her heart prompted, she was unhappy. Bude could not resist the
temptation to be with her--indeed he argued to himself that, as her
suitor and an adventurer about to risk himself in her cause, he had a
right to be near her. Meanwhile Merton was the confidant of both of the
perplexed lovers; at least Miss McCabe (who, of cou