uld
happen here, no one but myself would have seen the lonely figure of John
Mayrant, standing by the window and looking out into the dark quiet of
the wood; his name would be passed down for a little while as the name
of a fool, and then he would be forgotten. "I believe that you will help
your friend." Yes; he had certainly written that, and it now came to me
that I might have said to him one thing more: Had he given Hortense the
chance to know what his feelings to her had become? But he would merely
have answered that here it was the duty of a gentleman to lie. Or, had
he possibly, at Newport, ever become her lover too much for any escaping
now? Had his dead passion once put his honor in a pawn which only
marriage could redeem? This might fit all that had come, so far; and
still, with such a two as they, I should forever hold the boy the
woman's victim. But this did not fit what came after. Perhaps it was the
late sitting of the night before, and the hushed and strange solitude
of my surroundings now, that had laid my mind open to all these thoughts
which my reason, in dealing with, answered continually, one by one, yet
which returned, requiring to be answered again; for there are times when
our uncomfortable eyes see through the appearances we have arranged for
daily life, into the actualities which lie forever behind them.

Going about thus in my boat, I rowed sleepiness into myself, and pushed
into a nook where shade from some thick growth hid the boat and me from
the sun; and there, almost enmeshed in the deep lattice of green, I
placed my coat beneath my head, and prone in the boat's bottom I drifted
into slumber. Once or twice my oblivion was pierced by the roaming honk
of the automobile; but with no more than the half-melted consciousness
that the Replacers were somewhere in the wood, oblivion closed over me
again; and when it altogether left me, it was because of voices near me
on the water, or on the bank. Their calls and laughter pushed themselves
into my drowsiness, and soon after I grew aware that the Replacers
were come here to see what was to be seen at Udolpho--the club, the old
church, a country place with a fine avenue--and that it was the church
they now couldn't get into, because my visit had disturbed the usual
whereabouts of the key, of which Gazza was now going in search. I could
have told him where to find it, but it pleased me not to disturb myself
for this, as I listened to him assuring Kitty