my breakfast
table a letter in Derrick's handwriting. Like most men, we hardly ever
corresponded--what women say in the eternal letters they send to each
other I can't conceive--but it struck me that under the circumstances
I ought to have sent him a line to ask how he was getting on, and my
conscience pricked me as I remembered that I had hardly thought of him
since we parted, being absorbed in my own matters. The letter was not
very long, but when one read between the lines it somehow told a good
deal. I have it lying by me, and this is a copy of it:

"Dear Sydney,--Do like a good fellow go to North Audley Street for me,
to the house which I described to you as the one where Lynwood lodged,
and tell me what he would see besides the church from his window--if
shops, what kind? Also if any glimpse of Oxford Street would be visible.
Then if you'll add to your favours by getting me a second-hand copy of
Laveleye's 'Socialisme Contemporain,' I should be for ever grateful. We
are settled in here all right. Bath is empty, but I people it as far as
I can with the folk out of 'Evelina' and 'Persuasion.' How did you get
on at Blachington? and which of the Misses Merrifield went in the end?
Don't bother about the commissions. Any time will do.

"Ever yours,

"Derrick Vaughan."

Poor old fellow! all the spirit seemed knocked out of him. There was not
one word about the Major, and who could say what wretchedness was veiled
in that curt phrase, "we are settled in all right"? All right! it was
all as wrong as it could be! My blood began to boil at the thought of
Derrick, with his great powers--his wonderful gift--cooped up in a place
where the study of life was so limited and so dull. Then there was his
hunger for news of Freda, and his silence as to what had kept him away
from Blachington, and about all a sort of proud humility which prevented
him from saying much that I should have expected him to say under the
circumstances.

It was Saturday, and my time was my own. I went out, got his book
for him; interviewed North Audley Street; spent a bad five minutes in
company with that villain 'Bradshaw,' who is responsible for so much of
the brain and eye disease of the nineteenth century, and finally left
Paddington in the Flying Dutchman, which landed me at Bath early in the
afternoon. I left my portmanteau at the station, and walked through the
city till I reached Gay Street. Like most of the streets of Bath, it
was broad, and