ver had such a thing. Not that he isn't capable of
it--on the contrary, he's one of the few men I can think of who is."

At this point in the conversation Honora thought that her curiosity had
gone far enough.

CHAPTER IV

THE VIKING

She was returning on foot from the bank in Thames Street, where she had
deposited her legacy, when she met him who had been the subject of her
conversation with Mrs. Shorter. And the encounter seemed--and was--the
most natural thing in the world. She did not stop to ask herself why it
was so fitting that the Viking should be a part of Vineland: why his
coming should have given it the one and final needful touch. For that
designation of Reginald Farwell's had come back to her. Despite the fact
that Hugh Chiltern had with such apparent resolution set his face towards
literature and the tillage of the land, it was as the Viking still that
her imagination pictured him. By these tokens we may perceive that this
faculty of our heroine's has been at work, and her canvas already
sketched in.

Whether by design or accident he was at the leafy entrance of her lane
she was not to know. She spied him standing there; and in her leisurely
approach a strange conceit of reincarnation possessed her, and she smiled
at the contrast thus summoned up. Despite the jingling harnesses of
Bellevue Avenue and the background of Mr. Chamberlin's palace wall;
despite the straw hat and white trousers and blue double-breasted serge
coat in which he was conventionally arrayed, he was the sea fighter
still--of all the ages. M. Vipsanius Agrippa, who had won an empire for
Augustus, had just such a head.

Their greeting, too, was conventional enough, and he turned and walked
with her up the lane, and halted before the lilacs. "You have Mrs.
Forsythe's house," he said. "How well I remember it! My mother used to
bring me here years ago."

"Won't you come in?" asked Honora, gently.

He seemed to have forgotten her as they mounted in silence to the porch,
and she watched him with curious feelings as he gazed about him, and
peered through the windows into the drawing-room.

"It's just as it was," he said. "Even the furniture. I'm glad you haven't
moved it. They used to sit over there in the corner, and have tea on the
ebony table. And it was always dark-just as it is now. I can see them.
They wore dresses with wide skirts and flounces, and queer low collars
and bonnets. And they talked in subdued voices--unlike