te view
which was now bathed in the soft light of a newly risen moon.

"It still has a smack of Drury Lane, hasn't it?" said Howard. "Strange
that whenever we see anything beautiful in the way of a landscape we at
once compare it with a stage 'set.' The fact of it is, my dear
Stafford, we have become absolutely artificial; we pretend to admire
Nature, but we are thinking of a theatre all the time; we throw up our
eyes ecstatically when we hear a nightingale, but we much prefer a
comic singer at the Tivoli. We talk sentiment, at feast, some of us,
but we have ceased to feel it; we don't really know what it means. I
believe some of the minor poets still write about what they call Love,
but in my private opinion the thing itself has become instinct. Who
knows anything about it? Take yourself, for instance; you've never been
in love, you've everything that you can desire, you're clad in purple
and fine linen, you fare sumptuously every day, you flirt six days in
the week, and rest not on the seventh--but love! You don't know what it
means; and if you do, you're far too wise in your generation to go in
for such an uncomfortable emotion."

Stafford smiled rather absently; he was scarcely listening; he was so
accustomed to Howard's cynical diatribes that more often than not they
made no more impression on him than water on a duck's back. Besides, he
was thinking of Ida Heron, the girl whose strange history he had just
been listening to.

There was silence for a minute or two, and while they stood leaning
against the door-way two men came out of another door in the inn and
stood talking. They were commercial travellers, and they were enjoying
their pipes--of extremely strong tobacco--after a hard day's work.
Presently one of them said:

"Seen that place of Sir Stephen Orme's on the hill? Splendacious, isn't
it? Must have cost a small fortune. I wonder what the old man's game
is."

The other man shook his head, and laughed.

"Of course he's up to some game. He wouldn't lay out all that money for
nothing, millionaire as he is. He's always got something up his sleeve.
Perhaps he's going to entertain some big swell he wants to get into his
net, or some of the foreign princes he's hand-in-glove with. You never
know what Sir Stephen Orme's up to. Perhaps he's going to stand for the
county; if so, he's bound to get in. He always succeeds, or, if he
don't, you don't hear of his failures. He's the sort of man Disraeli
used to wr