morning, and
even in that simple act he found reproaches. He was carrying away from
Darco's service a far different kit to that he had brought into it. The
three or four coarse homemade shirts, and the rough and scanty supply of
underclothing, were exchanged for linen and silks and woollen stuffs
of the finest. There were trees for his boots; there was a dandy
dressing-case; there were many things of the mere existence and use of
which he had not known two years ago. They were all mementoes of Darco's
generosity. Surely no man had ever found so open-handed an employer.
But, for all these reflections, Paul could not surrender Claudia.

He heard the clatter of the breakfast apparatus, and smelt the odours of
coffee and the savoury meats the soul of which Darco loved; but he dared
not face the man to whom he felt he had behaved so badly.

'Are you gomink in to pregfast?' Darco trumpeted.

Paul entered and took his seat, and swallowed a cup of coffee; but he
had no heart to eat.

Darco took his prodigious breakfast in cold gloom, and Paul was as sure
of his bitter resentment as of his own useless regret for having wounded
him. It was a trying hour for both of them.

'I am going out now,' said Darco, 'ant you will pe gone before I am pack
again. Shake hants.' You are going to be very zorry before I see you
again.'

Paul took the proffered hand, and was nine-tenths inclined to beg
himself back again into Darco's friendship; but he could not bring
himself to speak, and in a second or two Darco was in the street, and
the opportunity had gone. But Paul had his marching-orders, at least,
and, calling a fly, he saw his luggage set upon it, drove to the
railway-station, deposited all his belongings in the cloak-room, and
then started to give Claudia his news. Claudia sent out word that he
might call again in an hour, and, glancing disconsolately at the window
of her sitting-room as he walked away, he saw Miss Pounceby giggling
behind the curtains with her head in a bush of curlpapers. He paced the
streets until the hour had gone by, and then returned.

'What brings you here so early?' Claudia asked.

She looked ravishingly fresh and pretty to Paul's fancy.

'I told Darco,'Paul answered, 'that I was going to London, and that I
wanted to leave at the end of next week. He was hurt and angry, and he
said that, if I had made up my mind about it, I had better go at once.'

'You have behaved very foolishly, Paul,' said Claudia