tic undertaking
would have been the moral triumph of Lucy Sorrel over the temptation he
had held out to her. Had she been honest to her better womanhood,--had
she still possessed the "child's heart," with which his remembrance and
imagination had endowed her, he would have resigned every other thought
save that of so smoothing the path of life for her that she might tread
it easily to the end. But now that she had disappointed him, he had, so
he told himself, done with fine illusions and fair beliefs for ever. And
he had started on a lonely quest,--a search for something vague and
intangible, the very nature of which he himself could not tell. Some
glimmering ghost of a notion lurked in his mind that perhaps, during his
self-imposed solitary ramblings, he might find some new and unexplored
channel wherein his vast wealth might flow to good purpose after his
death, without the trammels of Committee-ism and Red-Tape-ism. But he
expected and formulated nothing,--he was more or less in a state of
quiescence, awaiting adventures without either hope or fear. In the
meantime, here he sat in the shady Somersetshire lane, resting,--the
multi-millionaire whose very name shook the money-markets of the world,
but who to all present appearances seemed no more than a tramp, footing
it wearily along one of the many winding "short cuts" through the
country between Somerset and Devon, and as unlike the actual self of him
as known to Lombard Street and the Stock Exchange as a beggar is unlike
a king.

"After all, it's quite as interesting as 'big game' shooting!" he said,
the smile still lingering in his eyes. "I am after 'sport,'--in a novel
fashion! I am on the lookout for new specimens of men and women,--real
honest ones! I may find them,--I may not,--but the search will surely
prove at least as instructive and profitable as if one went out to the
Arctic regions for the purpose of killing innocent polar bears! Change
and excitement are what every one craves for nowadays--I'm getting as
much as I want--in my own way!"

He thought over the whole situation, and reviewed with a certain sense
of interest and amusement his method of action since he left London.
Benson, his valet, had packed his portmanteau, according to orders, with
everything that was necessary for a short sea trip, and then had seen
him off at the station for Southampton,--and to Southampton he had gone.
Arrived there, he had proceeded to a hotel, where, under an assumed