right idea came to him, why not answer these letters
with sixpenny telegrams, which he could hand in himself?

He found a sheaf of telegraph forms in the bureau, and sat down before
the letters, dealing with them one by one, and as relevantly as he
could. It was a rather interesting and amusing game, and when he had
finished he felt fairly satisfied. "Awfully sorry can't come," was the
reply to the dinner invitations. The letter signed "Childersley" worried
him, till he looked up the name in "Who's Who" and found a Lord
answering to it at the same address as that on the note paper.

He had struck by accident on one of the alleviations of a major misery
of civilized life, replying to Letters, and he felt like patenting it.

He left the house with the sheaf of telegrams, found the nearest post
office--which is situated directly opposite to Charing Cross
Station--and returned. Then lighting a cigar, he took the friendly and
indefatigable "Who's Who" upon his knee, and began to turn the pages
indolently. It is a most interesting volume for an idle moment, full of
scattered romance, tales of struggle and adventure, compressed into a
few lines, peeps of history, and the epitaphs of still living men.

"I want to tell you--you are an old ass."

The words still sounding in his ears made him turn again to the name
Plinlimon. The contrast between Lady Plinlimon and the girl, whose
vision dominated his mind, rose up again sharply at sight of the printed
name.

Ass! That name did not apply to Rochester. To fit him with an
appropriate pseudonym would be impossible. Fool, idiot, sumph--Jones
tried them all on the image of the defunct, but they were too small.

"Plinlimon: 3rd Baron," read Jones, "created 1831, Albert James, b.
March 10th, 1862. O. S. of second Baron and Julia d. of J. H. Thompson
of Clifton, m. Sapphira, d. of Marcus Mulhausen, educ. privately.
Address The Roost, Tite Street, Chelsea."

Mulhausen! He almost dropped the book. Mulhausen! Collins, his office,
and that terrible family party all rose up before him. Here was the
scamp who had diddled Rochester out of the coal mine, the father of the
woman who had diddled him out of thousands. The paragraph in "Who's Who"
turned from printed matter to a nest of wriggling vipers. He threw the
book on the table, rose up, and began to pace the floor.

The girl-wife in the Victoria, his own position--everything was
forgotten, before the monstrous fact half guessed, half