"never trouble yourself about
money. You were her father; anything you want and what I have is yours.
Let us shake hands and say good-bye, and let us never meet again. As I
said, God forgive us all!"

"Thank you--thank you," said the old man, looking up through the white
hair that fell about his eyes. "It is a strange world and we are all
miserable sinners. I hope there is a better somewhere. I'm well-nigh
tired of this, especially now that Beatrice has gone. Poor girl, she was
a good daughter and a fine woman. Good-bye. Good-bye!"

Then Geoffrey went.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE DUCHESS'S BALL

Geoffrey reached Town a little before eleven o'clock that night--a
haunted man--haunted for life by a vision of that face still lovely
in death, floating alone upon the deep, and companioned only by the
screaming mews--or perchance now sinking or sunk to an unfathomable
grave. Well might such a vision haunt a man, the man whom alone of all
men those cold lips had kissed, and for whose dear sake this dreadful
thing was done.

He took a cab directing the driver to go to Bolton Street and to stop
at his club as he passed. There might be letters for him there, he
thought--something which would distract his mind a little. As it chanced
there was a letter, marked "private," and a telegram; both had been
delivered that evening, the porter said, the former about an hour ago by
hand.

Idly he opened the telegram--it was from his lawyers: "Your cousin, the
child George Bingham, is, as we have just heard, dead. Please call on us
early to-morrow morning."

He started a little, for this meant a good deal to Geoffrey. It meant a
baronetcy and eight thousand a year, more or less. How delighted Honoria
would be, he thought with a sad smile; the loss of that large income had
always been a bitter pill to her, and one which she had made him swallow
again and again. Well, there it was. Poor boy, he had always been
ailing--an old man's child!

He put the telegram in his pocket and got into the hansom again. There
was a lamp in it and by its light he read the letter. It was from the
Prime Minister and ran thus:

"My dear Bingham,--I have not seen you since Monday to thank you for
the magnificent speech you made on that night. Allow me to add my
congratulations to those of everybody else. As you know, the Under
Secretaryship of the Home Office is vacant. On behalf of my colleagues
and myself I write to ask if you will consent to fill it for