ared, wouldn't be back till the afternoon, and the
clerk, an elderly person hitherto subservient, was curiously short about
it.

By this time Mr. Twist was thoroughly uneasy, and he determined to ask
the first acquaintance he met what the matter was. But he couldn't find
anybody. Every one, his architect, his various experts--those genial and
frolicsome young men--were either engaged or away on business somewhere
else. He set his teeth, and drove to the Cosmopolitan to seek out old
Ridding--it wasn't a place he drove to willingly after his recent
undignified departure, but he was determined to get to the bottom of
this thing--and walking into the parlour was instantly aware of a hush
falling upon it, a holding of the breath.

In the distance he saw old Ridding,--distinctly; and distinctly he saw
that old Ridding saw him. He was sitting at the far end of the great
parlour, facing the entrance, by the side of something vast and black
heaped up in the adjacent chair. He had the look on his pink and
naturally pleasant face of one who has abandoned hope. On seeing Mr.
Twist a ray of interest lit him up, and he half rose. The formless mass
in the next chair which Mr. Twist had taken for inanimate matter,
probably cushions and wraps, and now perceived was one of the higher
mammals, put out a hand and said something,--at least, it opened that
part of its face which is called a mouth but which to Mr. Twist in the
heated and abnormal condition of his brain seemed like the snap-to of
some great bag,--and at that moment a group of people crossed the hall
in front of old Ridding, and when the path was again clear the chair
that had contained him was empty. He had disappeared. Completely. Only
the higher mammal was left, watching Mr. Twist with heavy eyes like two
smouldering coals.

He couldn't face those eyes. He did try to, and hesitated while he
tried, and then he found he couldn't; so he swerved away to the right,
and went out quickly by the side door.

There was now one other person left who would perhaps clear him up as to
the meaning of all this, and he was the lawyer he had gone to about the
guardianship. True he had been angry with him at the time, but that was
chiefly because he had been angry with himself. At bottom he had carried
away an impression of friendliness. To this man he would now go as a
last resource before turning back home, and once more he raced up Main
Street in his Ford, producing by these repeated ap