to be thinking of bed."

'They rose, as it were from the bank, and left me, so to speak, under
water. I watched them as they passed slowly out of sight up the marble
staircase which I had mispraised. I turned and surveyed the brilliant,
silent scene presented by the card-players.

'I wondered what old Mr. Abraham Hayward would have done in my place.
Would he have just darted in among those tables and "held" them? I
presumed that he would not have stolen silently away, quickly and
cravenly away, up the marble staircase--as _I_ did.

'I don't know which was the greater, the relief or the humiliation of
finding myself in my bedroom. Perhaps the humiliation was the greater.
There, on a chair, was my grand new smoking-suit, laid out for me--what
a mockery! Once I had foreseen myself wearing it in the smoking-room
at a late hour--the centre of a group of eminent men entranced by the
brilliancy of my conversation. And now--! I was nothing but a small,
dull, soup-stained, sticking-plastered, nerve-racked recluse. Nerves,
yes. I assured myself that I had not seen--what I had seemed to see. All
very odd, of course, and very unpleasant, but easily explained. Nerves.
Excitement of coming to Keeb too much for me. A good night's rest: that
was all I needed. To-morrow I should laugh at myself.

'I wondered that I wasn't tired physically. There my grand new silk
pyjamas were, yet I felt no desire to go to bed... none while it was
still possible for me to go. The little writing-table at the foot of my
bed seemed to invite me. I had brought with me in my portmanteau a sheaf
of letters, letters that I had purposely left unanswered in order that I
might answer them on KEEB HALL note-paper. These the footman had neatly
laid beside the blotting-pad on that little writing-table at the foot
of the bed. I regretted that the notepaper stacked there had no ducal
coronet on it. What matter? The address sufficed. If I hadn't yet made a
good impression on the people who were staying here, I could at any rate
make one on the people who weren't. I sat down. I set to work. I wrote a
prodigious number of fluent and graceful notes.

'Some of these were to strangers who wanted my autograph. I was always
delighted to send my autograph, and never perfunctory in the manner of
sending it.... "Dear Madam," I remember writing to somebody that night,
"were it not that you make your request for it so charmingly, I should
hesitate to send you that which rarity