ust and
discomfort of the hot September day.

Whoever it was that he awaited did not come, and yet Mr. Barker
exhibited no sign of annoyance. He went to another room, and sat in a
deep arm-chair with a newspaper which he did not read, and once he took
a scrap of paper from his pocket and made a short note upon it with a
patent gold pencil. It was a very quiet club, and Mr. Barker seemed to
be its quietest member. And well he might be, for he had made up his
mind on a grave point. He had determined to marry.

He had long known it must come, and had said to himself more than once
that "to every man upon this earth death cometh, soon or late;" but
being human, he had put off the evil day, having always thought that it
must, of necessity, be evil. But now it was different. What he had said
to the Duke, and what the Duke had said to him, that evening on the
yacht when they were talking about marriage, was exactly what he had
always expected to occur. The day, he said, must come when the
enterprising mamma will get the better of Silas B. Barker junior. The
girl of the season, with her cartload of bouquets slung all over her,
her neat figure, her pink-and-white complexion and her matchless staying
powers in a ballroom, will descend upon the devoted victim Barker, beak
and talons, like the fish-hawk on the poor, simple minnow innocently
disporting itself in the crystal waters of happiness. There will be
wedding presents, and a breakfast, and a journey, and a prospect of
everlasting misery. All these things, thought he, must come to every man
in time, unless he is a saint, or an author, or has no money, and
therefore they must come to me; but now it was different. If there is to
be any fishing, he thought, I will be the hawk, and the minnow may take
its chance of happiness. Why should the minnow not be happy? I am a
hawk; well--but I am a very good hawk.

But these reflections were not what occupied his mind as he sat with his
second cigar in the reading-room of his quiet club. These things he had
elaborated in his brain at least three days ago, and they had now taken
the form of a decision, against which there could be no appeal, because
it was pleasant to the _ego_ of Mr Barker. Judgments of that sort he
never reversed. He had fully determined to be the hawk, he had picked
out his minnow, and he was meditating the capture of his prey. A great
many people do as much as that, and discover too late that what they
have taken fo