seemed
wrong in their shades, and he began from the beginning to choose again.

While entering on the task he heard a forced 'Ahem!' from without the
porch, evidently uttered to attract his attention, and footsteps again
advancing to the door. His man, whom he had quite forgotten in his
mental turmoil, was still waiting there.

'I beg your pardon, sir,' the man said from round the doorway; 'but
here's the note from Mr. Downe that you didn't take. He called just
after you went out, and as he couldn't wait, he wrote this on your study-
table.'

He handed in the letter--no black-bordered one now, but a
practical-looking note in the well-known writing of the solicitor.

'DEAR BARNET'--it ran--'Perhaps you will be prepared for the
information I am about to give--that Lucy Savile and myself are going
to be married this morning. I have hitherto said nothing as to my
intention to any of my friends, for reasons which I am sure you will
fully appreciate. The crisis has been brought about by her expressing
her intention to join her brother in India. I then discovered that I
could not do without her.

'It is to be quite a private wedding; but it is my particular wish
that you come down here quietly at ten, and go to church with us; it
will add greatly to the pleasure I shall experience in the ceremony,
and, I believe, to Lucy's also. I have called on you very early to
make the request, in the belief that I should find you at home; but
you are beforehand with me in your early rising.--Yours sincerely, C.
Downe.'

'Need I wait, sir?' said the servant after a dead silence.

'That will do, William. No answer,' said Barnet calmly.

When the man had gone Barnet re-read the letter. Turning eventually to
the wall-papers, which he had been at such pains to select, he
deliberately tore them into halves and quarters, and threw them into the
empty fireplace. Then he went out of the house; locked the door, and
stood in the front awhile. Instead of returning into the town, he went
down the harbour-road and thoughtfully lingered about by the sea, near
the spot where the body of Downe's late wife had been found and brought
ashore.

Barnet was a man with a rich capacity for misery, and there is no doubt
that he exercised it to its fullest extent now. The events that had, as
it were, dashed themselves together into one half-hour of this day showed
that curious refinement of cruelty in t