had reached him
on the reverse side of an invitation to take tea at Merrion--a vague
some-day-when-you're-passing sort of invitation, in Neeld's eyes plainly
and merely a pretext for writing and an opportunity of conveying the
urgent little scrawl on the other side. It arrived at mid-day; in the
afternoon Duplay had come and was now alone with Iver.

The outward calm of the gray-haired old gentleman who sat on the lawn at
Fairholme, holding a weekly review upside down, was no index to the
alarming and disturbing questions which were agitating him within. At
the end of a blameless life it is hard to discover that you must do one
of two things and that, whichever you do, you will feel like a villain.
The news that Josiah Cholderton's Journal was going off very fairly well
with the trade had been unable to give its editor any consolation; he
did not care about the Journal now.

Iver came out and sat down beside him without speaking. Neeld hastily
restored his paper to a position more befitting its dignity and became
apparently absorbed in an article on _Shyness in Elephants_; the subject
was treated with a wealth of illustration and in a vein of introspective
philosophy exceedingly instructive. But it was all wasted on Mr Neeld.
He was waiting for Iver; no man could be so silent unless he had
something important to say or to leave unsaid. And Iver was not even
smoking the cigar which he always smoked after tea. Neeld could bear it
no longer; he got up and was about to move away.

"Stop, Neeld. Do you mind sitting down again for a moment?"

Neeld could do nothing but comply. The review fell on the ground by him
and he ceased to struggle with the elephants.

"I want to ask your opinion----"

"My dear Iver, my opinion! Oh, I'm not a business man, and----"

"It's not business. You know Major Duplay? What do you think of him?"

"I--I've always found him very agreeable."

"Yes, so have I. And I've always thought him honest, haven't you?"

Neeld admitted that he had no reason to impugn the Major's character.

"And I suppose he's sane," Iver pursued. "But he's just been telling me
the most extraordinary thing." He paused a moment. "I dare say you've
noticed something between Janie and young Tristram? I may as well tell
you that she has just consented to marry him. But I don't want to talk
about that except so far as it comes into the other matter--which it
does very considerably." He laid his hand on Neeld's knee. "Nee