isappointed--anything but glad. His self-esteem was wounded, and to
have avoided an injury there he would have faced even the obligation
he had entered into before coming to London.

"She has taken up Trentham because the creature has a bit of money," he
muttered savagely, crumpling up the offending note, and then opening it
out to read the fateful words again. "So much for women!" And he swept
the sex aside for the perfidy of this one, though the woman's very
selfishness was the saving of him.

"Delighted!" he wrote in bold letters on a postcard, and put her name
and address on it. Then he tore it up, and feared he was a cad to the
bargain.

Delighted! He was miserable for three days, until he could sit down and
pen a sensible letter, in which he expressed the opinion that Flo had a
better knowledge of her affections than he had, and that while he would
never have given her the pain of breaking their engagement, he accepted
the situation with some philosophy, since it did not altogether run
against his own inclination.

A silly affair enough, as he came to understand once the final letter
had been posted, and even so he had a delusion that at some time he had
been actually in love with Flo. One cannot tell whether she had any
delusions on the same object. She was not of the kind who dream dreams.

"I'm terribly sorry, old man, that Flo has cut up this way," wrote
Edgar. "I always fancied you and she were engaged, but evidently not.
Trentham is a very decent sort. They're to be married soon now that the
mater is all right again. Flo is nuts on 'style,' you know, and you are
not--unless it's literary style. After all, perhaps it's for the best. I
think everything is for the best except what happens at the _Leader_
office. Steel still keeps the uneven tenor of his way. I make wonderful
progress. Don't gasp when I tell you that, quite unsolicited, I got a
rise of half-a-crown last week. I think I shall buy a motor-car with
it. Fancy, Jones has gone in for electric light. You wouldn't know the
place now--the light shows up the dirt so strongly."

But Laysford had entirely lost interest for Henry now. To fancy one has
been in love is almost as serious a condition as to be in love.

CHAPTER XXI

"THAT BOOK"

ADRIAN GRANT had gone away to Sardinia, but he had left Henry urged to
the point of writing "that book." At first Henry approached the task
wit