interfield. "Another taste in common between
you and Mr. Romayne," he said, "besides your liking for dogs."

This at once produced the desired result. Romayne eagerly invited
Winterfield to see his pictures. "There are not many of them," he said.
"But they are really worth looking at. When will you come?"

"The sooner the better," Winterfield answered, cordially. "Will
to-morrow do--by the noonday light?"

"Whenever you please. Your time is mine."

Among his other accomplishments, Father Benwell was a chess-player. If
his thoughts at that moment had been expressed in language, they would
have said, "Check to the queen."

CHAPTER IV.

THE END OF THE HONEYMOON.

ON the next morning, Winterfield arrived alone at Romayne's house.

Having been included, as a matter of course, in the invitation to see
the pictures, Father Benwell had made an excuse, and had asked leave to
defer the proposed visit. From his point of view, he had nothing further
to gain by being present at a second meeting between the two men--in the
absence of Stella. He had it on Romayne's own authority that she was
in constant attendance on her mother, and that her husband was alone.
"Either Mrs. Eyrecourt will get better, or she will die," Father Benwell
reasoned. "I shall make constant inquiries after her health, and, in
either case, I shall know when Mrs. Romayne returns to Ten Acres Lodge.
After that domestic event, the next time Mr. Winterfield visits Mr.
Romayne, I shall go and see the pictures."

It is one of the defects of a super-subtle intellect to trust too
implicitly to calculation, and to leave nothing to chance. Once or twice
already Father Benwell had been (in the popular phrase) a little too
clever--and chance had thrown him out. As events happened, chance was
destined to throw him out once more.

Of the most modest pretensions, in regard to numbers and size, the
pictures collected by the late Lady Berrick were masterly works of
modern art. With few exceptions, they had been produced by the matchless
English landscape painters of half a century since. There was no formal
gallery here. The pictures were so few that they could be hung in
excellent lights in the different living-rooms of the villa. Turner,
Constable, Collins, Danby, Callcott, Linnell--the master of Beaupark
House passed from one to the other with the enjoyment of a man who
thoroughly appreciated the truest and finest landscape art that the
world has yet seen.