he dark. 'Well, I've seen the last of him,' he
thought. 'Poor old Holroyd! to think of his having written a
book--he's one of those unlucky beggars who never make a hit at
anything. I expect I shall have some trouble about it by-and-by.'

Holroyd walked on with a heavier heart. 'He won't miss me,' he told
himself. 'Will Mabel say good-bye like that?'

CHAPTER III.

GOOD-BYE.

On the same afternoon in which we have seen Mark and Vincent walk home
together for the last time, Mrs. Langton and her eldest daughter Mabel
were sitting in the pretty drawing-room of their house in Kensington
Park Gardens.

Mrs. Langton was the wife of a successful Q.C. at the Chancery Bar,
and one of those elegantly languid women with a manner charming enough
to conceal a slight shallowness of mind and character; she was pretty
still, and an invalid at all times when indisposition was not
positively inconvenient.

It was one of her 'at home' days, but fewer people than usual had made
their appearance, and these had filtered away early, leaving traces of
their presence behind them in the confidential grouping of seats and
the teacups left high and dry in various parts of the room.

Mrs. Langton was leaning luxuriously back in a low soft chair, lazily
watching the firebeams glisten through the stained-glass screen, and
Mabel was on a couch near the window trying to read a magazine by the
fading light.

'Hadn't you better ring for the lamps, Mabel?' suggested her mother.
'You can't possibly see to read by this light, and it's so trying for
the eyes. I suppose no one else will call now, but it's very strange
that Vincent should not have come to say good-bye.'

'Vincent doesn't care about "at homes,"' said Mabel.

'Still, not to say good-bye--after knowing us so long, too! and I'm
sure we've tried to show him every kindness. Your father was always
having solicitors to meet him at dinner, and it was never any use; and
he sails to-morrow. I think he _might_ have found time to come!'

'So do I,' agreed Mabel. 'It's not like Vincent, though he was always
shy and odd in some things. He hasn't been to see us nearly so much
lately, but I can't believe he will really go away without a word.'

Mrs. Langton yawned delicately. 'It would not surprise me, I must
say,' she said. 'When a young man sets himself----' but whatever she
was going to say was broken off by the entrance of her youngest
daughter Dolly, with the German governess, follo