ings she is going to should not be known. She fancies
that would save both of you a great deal of unnecessary and fruitless
pain, do you see? That really is her only object in wishing to have any
concealment about the matter."

"But there is no need for any such concealment," he said. "You may tell
Sheila that if she likes to stay on with my aunt, so much the better;
and I take it very kind of her that she went there, instead of going
home or to a strange house."

"Am I to tell her that you mean to leave London?"

"Yes."

They went into the billiard-room. Mosenberg was not permitted to play,
as he had not dined in the club, but Ingram and Lavender proceeded to
have a game, the former being content to accept something like thirty in
a hundred. It was speedily very clear that Lavender's heart was not in
the contest. He kept forgetting which ball he had been playing, missing
easy shots, playing a perversely wrong game, and so forth. And yet his
spirits were not much downcast.

"Is Peter Hewetson still at Tarbert, do you know?" he asked of Ingram.

"I believe so. I heard of him lately. He and one or two more are there."

"I suppose you'll look in on them if you go North?"

"Certainly. The place is badly perfumed, but picturesque, and there is
generally plenty of whisky about."

"When do you go North?"

"I don't know. In a week or two."

That was all that Lavender hinted of his plans. He went home early that
night, and spent an hour or two in packing up some things, and in
writing a long letter to his aunt, which was destined considerably to
astonish that lady. Then he lay down and had a few hours' rest.

In the early morning he went out and walked across Kensington Gardens
down to the Gore. He wished to have one look at the house in which
Sheila was, or perhaps he might, from a distance, see her come out on a
simple errand? He knew, for example, that she had a superstitious liking
for posting her letters herself: in wet weather or dry she invariably
carried her own correspondence to the nearest pillar-post. Perhaps he
might have one glimpse of her face, to see how she was looking, before
he left London.

There were few people about: one or two well-known lawyers and merchants
were riding by to have their morning canter in the Park; the shops were
being opened. Over there was the house--with its dark front of bricks,
its hard ivy, and its small windows with formal red curtains--in which
Sheila was immured. Th