is it Tennyson?--says somewhere about our showing a precious
cold shoulder to the dead if they were injudicious enough to turn up
again; those aren't the exact words, but that's the idea. Well, I was
thinking whether, if a fellow like poor Holroyd were to come back now,
he'd find anyone to care a pin about him, and, as you were his closest
friend, I thought I'd try how _you_ took it. It was thoughtless, I
know. I never dreamed it would affect you in this way; you're as white
as chalk still--it's quite knocked you over. I'm really very sorry!'

'It was not a friendly thing to do,' said Mark, recovering himself.
'It was not kind, when one has known a man so long, and believed him
dead, and then to be made to believe that he is still alive,
it--it----. You can't wonder if I look rather shaken.'

'I don't,' said Caffyn; 'I quite understand. He is not quite forgotten
after all, then? He still has a faithful friend in you to remember
him; and he's been dead six months? How many of us can hope for that?
You must have been very fond of him.'

'Very,' said Mark, with a sad self-loathing as he spoke the lie. 'I
shall never see anyone like him--never!'

('How well he does it, after all!' thought Caffyn. 'I shall have
plenty of sport with him.') 'Would it give you any comfort to talk
about him now and then,' he suggested, 'with one who knew him, too,
though not as well perhaps as you did?'

'Thanks!' said Mark, 'I think it would some day, but not yet. I don't
feel quite up to it at present.'

'Well,' said the other, with a wholly private grin, 'I won't distress
you by talking of him till you introduce the subject; and you quite
forgive me for saying what I did, don't you?'

'Quite,' said Mark. 'And now I think I'll say good-night!'

The horror of those few moments in which he had seen detection staring
him in the face still clung to him as he walked back to his lodgings.
He cursed his folly in ever having exposed himself to such tremendous
risks, until he remembered that, after all, his situation remained the
same. He had merely been frightened with false fire. If he had not
been very sure that the dead would never rise to denounce him, he
would not have done what he had done. How could Vincent Holroyd have
escaped? Still, it was an ugly thought, and it followed him to his
pillow that night and gave him fearful dreams. He was in a large
gathering, and Mabel was there, too; he could see her at the other end
of an immense ha