"Well, old man, I'm sorry for you; and don't speak about it at all if
it gives you pain."

"Oh, I'll make a clean breast of it. You've told your affair, and I'll
tell mine. I dare say I'll feel all the better for it."

"Drive on, then, old man."

Dacres rose, took a couple of glasses of beer in quick succession,
then resumed his seat, then picked out a cigar from the box with
unusual fastidiousness, then drew a match, then lighted the cigar,
then sent out a dozen heavy volumes of smoke, which encircled him so
completely that he became quite concealed from Hawbury's view. But
even this cloud did not seem sufficient to correspond with the gloom
of his soul. Other clouds rolled forth, and still others, until all
their congregated folds encircled him, and in the midst there was a
dim vision of a big head, whose stiff, high, curling, crisp hair, and
massive brow, and dense beard, seemed like some living manifestation
of cloud-compelling Jove.

For some time there was silence, and Hawbury said nothing, but waited
for his friend to speak.

At last a voice was heard--deep, solemn, awful, portentous, ominous,
sorrow-laden, weird, mysterious, prophetic, obscure, gloomy, doleful,
dismal, and apocalyptic.

"_Hawbury!_"

"Well, old man?"

"HAWBURY!"

"All right."

"Are you listening?"

"Certainly."

"_Well--I'm--married!_"

Hawbury sprang to his feet as though he had been shot.

"What!" he cried.

"_I'm married!_"

"You're what? Married? _You! married!_ Scone Dacres! not you--not
_married?_"

"_I'm married!_"

"Good Lord!"

"_I'm married_!"

Hawbury sank back in his seat, overwhelmed by the force of this sudden
and tremendous revelation. For some time there was a deep silence.
Both were smoking. The clouds rolled forth from the lips of each, and
curled over their heads, and twined in voluminous folds, and gathered
over them in dark, impenetrable masses. Even so rested the clouds of
doubt, of darkness, and of gloom over the soul of each, and those
which were visible to the eye seemed to typify, symbolize,
characterize, and body forth the darker clouds that overshadowed the
mind.

"_I'm married_!" repeated Dacres, who now seemed to have become like
Poe's raven, and all his words one melancholy burden bore.

"You were not married when I was last with you?" said Hawbury at last,
in the tone of one who was recovering from a fainting fit.

"Yes, I was."

"Not in South America?"

"Yes, in South Am