ns!
A hundred and four guineas a year--remember! guineas, not pounds.
And Paggy thinks he could get it arranged for us to go out and dine
together in the middle of the day at an Italian restaurant...."

"I say, what a lark!" Sally immediately warms up to the scheme. "I
could come, too. Do you know, Tishy dear, I was just going to twit
you with the negro and his spots. But now I won't."

* * * * *

The Julius Bradshaws must have reached home early, as our story will
show later that the anticipated collision with the Dragon took place
the same evening. No great matter for surprise, this, to any one who
has noticed the energetic impatience for immediate town-event in folk
just off a holiday. These two were too keen to grapple with their
domestic problem to allow of delays. So, after getting some dinner in
a hurry at Georgiana Terrace, Bayswater, they must needs cab straight
away to Ladbroke Grove Road. As for what happened when they got there,
we shall know as much as we want of it later. For the present our
business lies with Fenwick and his wife; to watch, in sympathy with
the latter, for the next development in the strange mental state of the
former, and to hope with her, as it must be confessed, for continued
quiescence; or, better still, for a complete return of oblivion.

It seemed so cruelly hard to Rosalind that it might not be. What had
she to gain by the revival of a forgotten past--a past her own share
of which she had for twenty years striven to forget? Utterly guiltless
as, conceivably, she may have known herself to be, she had striven
against that past as the guilty strive with the memory of a concealed
crime. And here was she, at the end of this twenty years, with all
she most longed for at the beginning in her possession, mysteriously
attained with a thoroughness no combination of circumstances, no
patience or forbearance of her own, no self-restraint or generosity of
her young husband's could possibly have brought about. Think only of
what we do know of this imperfect story! Conceive that it should have
been possible for the Algernon Palliser of those days to know and
understand it to the full; indulge the supposition, however strained
it may be, that his so knowing it would not have placed him in a
felon's dock for the prompt and righteous murder of the betrayer--we
take the first convenient name--of the woman he loved. Convince
yourself this could have been; figure to y