'ere dropping hints that people are talking about us, and that they ask
'er awkward questions. Pretending to misunderstand 'er every time is
enough to send me crazy; and she's so sudden in what she says there's no
being up to 'er. On'y this morning she asked me if I should be sorry if
she died."

"What did you say?" inquired his listener.

"I said 'yes,'" admitted Mr. Wilks, reluctantly. "I couldn't say
anything else; but I said that she wasn't to let my feelings interfere
with 'er in any way."

Hardy's father sailed a day or two later, and after that nothing
happened. Equator Lodge was an impregnable fortress, and the only member
of the garrison he saw in a fortnight was Bella.

His depression did not escape the notice of his partner, who, after first
advising love-philtres and then a visit to a well-known specialist for
diseases of the heart, finally recommended more work, and put a generous
portion of his own on to the young man's desk. Hardy, who was in an evil
temper, pitched it on to the floor and, with a few incisive remarks on
levity unbecoming to age, pursued his duties in gloomy silence.

A short time afterwards, however, he had to grapple with his partner's
work in real earnest. For the first time in his life the genial
shipbroker was laid up with a rather serious illness. A chill caught
while bathing was going the round of certain unsuspected weak spots, and
the patient, who was of an inquiring turn of mind, was taking a greater
interest in medical works than his doctor deemed advisable.

"Most interesting study," he said, faintly, to Hardy, as the latter sat
by his bedside one evening and tried to cheer him in the usual way by
telling him that there was nothing the matter with him. "There are
dozens of different forms of liver complaint alone, and I've got 'em
all."

"Liver isn't much," said his visitor, with the confidence of youth.

"Mine is," retorted the invalid; "it's twice its proper size and still
growing. Base of the left lung is solidifying, or I'm much mistaken; the
heart, instead of waltzing as is suitable to my time of life, is doing a
galop, and everything else is as wrong as it can be."

"When are you coming back?" inquired the other.

"Back?" repeated Swann. "Back? You haven't been listening. I'm a
wreck. All through violating man's primeval instinct by messing about in
cold water. What is the news?"

Hardy pondered and shook his head. "Nugent is going to be marri