ountry
where it was situated, and had then communicated his discovery to
Stephen Linton, who understood the science and arts necessary for
utilizing such a discovery, the result being that in two years everyone
connected with the Taragonda Mine was rich. The sweepings of the
crushing rooms were worth twenty thousand pounds a year: and Herbert
Courtland had spent about ten thousand pounds--a fourth of his year's
income--in the quest of the meteor-bird to make a feather fan for Ella
Linton.) And when the business for which he had been summoned to London
had been set _en train_, he had paid a visit to his publishers. (They
wondered could he give them a novel on New Guinea. If he introduced
plenty of dialect and it was sufficiently unintelligible it might thrust
the kail yard out of the market; but the novel must be in dialect, they
assured him.) After promising to give the matter his attention, he paid
his visit to Phyllis, and then went to his rooms to dress; for when
Stephen Linton had said:

"Of course you'll dine with us to-night: I told Ella you would come."

He had said, "Thanks; I shall be very pleased."

"Come early; eight sharp," Mr. Linton had added.

And thus it was that at five minutes to eight o'clock Herbert found
himself face to face alone with the woman whom he had so grossly
humiliated.

Perhaps she was hard on him after all: she addressed him as Mr.
Courtland. She felt that she, at any rate, had returned to the straight
path of duty when she had done that. (It was Herbert Courtland who had
talked to Phyllis of the modern philosopher--a political philosopher or
a philosophical politician--who, writing against compromise, became the
leading exponent of that science, and had hoped to solve the question of
a Deity by using a small g in spelling God. On the same principle Ella
had called Herbert "Mr. Courtland.")

He felt uneasy. Was he ashamed of himself, she wondered?

"Stephen will be down in a moment, Mr. Courtland," she said.

He was glad to hear it.

"How warm it has been all day!" she added. "I thought of you toiling
away over figures in the city, when you might have been breathing the
lovely air of the sea. It was too bad of Stephen to bring you back."

"I assure you I was glad to get his letter at Leith," said he. "I was
thinking for the two days previous how I could best concoct a telegram
to myself at Leith in order that I might have some excuse for running
away."

"That is assuming th