ou always constantly meet your
enemies in London. And, when they met, they always devoted a great deal
of time to the advancement of the tacit and polite quarrel between them.
They argued with one another in Hyde Park on fine mornings, and were
really disgusted with one another at dinner parties and "At Homes." He
thought her fast--at balls; and she had once considered him blatant--at
a Marlborough House garden party. This last fact, indeed, put the coping
stone to the feud between them, for Mrs Lorton expressed her opinion to
a friend, and Burnham, of course, got to know of it. To be thought
blatant at Marlborough House was really intolerable. One might as well
be pronounced to have had a heathen air at Lambeth Palace.

Distinctly, Jack Burnham and Harriet Lorton were acutely antagonistic.

Yet, there must surely have been some strange, unknown link of sympathy
between them, for they both caught the influenza on the same day--it
was a Sunday morning--and both permitted it to develop into double
pneumonia.

After all, spar as we may, are we not all brothers and sisters?

The double pneumonia ought to have drawn them together; but, as he lived
in Piccadilly and she in Queen's Gate, and each was thoroughly
self-centred--nothing produces egoism so certainly as influenza--neither
knew of the illness of the other.

Providence denied to both that subtle joy, and they got to the mutton
chop and chipped potato stage of convalescence in childlike ignorance of
each other's misfortune.

There must certainly have been a curious community of mind between them,
for both their doctors ordered them to Margate, and they both took rooms
at Westgate. Now a similar taste in seaside places is undoubtedly an
excellent foundation for eternal friendship. Let the world crumble in
atoms, two people who both like Westgate will still find something to
talk about amid the confusion occasioned by the dissolution of kingdoms.

Jack Burnham arrived at the St Mildred's Hotel on a Thursday, with his
man.

Harriet Lorton came on the following Friday, with her maid.

Neither had any notion of the other's proceedings until they met back to
back, as you shall presently hear.

II

In ordinary circumstances of health and vigour, Burnham and Mrs Lorton
possessed dispositions of quite singular vivacity, looked upon life as a
fairly good, if rather practical joke, and were fully disposed to
consider happiness their _metier_. Being modern, they som