e or six more are in it. I can fancy the
hoary-headed villain gloating hideously over us now. I wish I had him
here. I could be _so_ unkind to him! He talked about the shooting and
the society. Bah! there's about one cock to every thousand acres of
forest; and as for women fair to look upon, I've not flushed one since
we came. I don't think I can stand it much longer."

"I am very sorry," Harry said; "I knew you were being bored to death,
and it's all on my account; but I didn't like to ask you about it. I'm
so horribly selfish!" The shadow of an imminent penitence began to steal
over him, when Royston broke in--

"Don't be childish. I liked to stay--never mind why--or I should not
have done so. Only now--you are getting better, and I realize the
situation more. I hardly know where to go. Not back to England,
certainly, yet. Besides the nuisance and chance work of picking up a
stud in the middle of the season, it isn't pleasant to be consoled for a
blank day by, 'you should have been here last month. Never was such
scent; and heaps of straight-running foxes!' And then they indulge
themselves in an imaginative 'cracker,' knowing you can't contradict
them. Shall I go to Albania? I should like to kill _something_ before I
turn homeward."

Harry seemed musing. Suddenly he half started up, clapping his hands. "I
knew I had forgotten!"

"Not such a singular circumstance as to warrant all that indecent
exultation," was the reply. "Well, out with it."

"I never told you that Fan had a letter this morning from Cecil
Tresilyan (they're immense friends, you know) to ask her to engage rooms
for them. They are in Paris now, and will be here in three days."

Keene raised himself on his arm, regarding his comrade with a sort of
admiration. "You're a natural curiosity, _mon cher_. None of us ever
quite appreciated you. I don't believe there's another man in existence,
situated as we are, who would have kept that intelligence at the back of
his head so long. _The_ Tresilyan, of course? I remember hearing about
her in India. Annesley came back from sick leave perfectly insane on the
subject. She _must_ be something extraordinary, for the recollection of
her made even him poetical--when he was sober. I asked about her when I
got to England, but her mother was taken very ill, or did something
equally unjustifiable, so she left town before I saw her."

"The mother really _was_ ill," Molyneux said, apologetically; "at least
she died