eneath a great tree, where Jocelyn Wray and he had stopped their horses
to talk for a moment, the bleared, bloated face of what had been a man
looked up at him. The sight for an instant seemed to startle the
beholder; a wave of anger at that face, set in a place where imagination
had an instant before played with a picture altogether different, passed
over him; then quickly went.

As he strode forward at a swinging pace, his thoughts swept swiftly
again into another channel, one they had been flowing in when he had
first entered the park that day. Above him the leaves rustled
ceaselessly; their restless movements seemed in keeping with his mood
wherein impatience mingled with other and fiercer emotions. Fate had
been against him, the inevitable "what must be," which, in the end,
crushes alike Faintheart or Strongheart. Of what avail to square his
shoulders? the danger pressed close; he felt it, by that intuition men
sometimes have. What if he left, left the field, this England? Who could
accuse him of cowardice if in that black moment he yielded to the
hateful course and went, like the guilty, pitiable skulkers?

"How do you do, Steele? Just the man I wanted to see!"

Near the main exit, toward which John Steele had unconsciously stepped,
the sound of a familiar voice and the appearance of a well-known stocky
form broke in, with startling abruptness, on the dark train of thought.

"Deep in some point of law?" went on Sir Charles. "'Pon honor, believe
you would have cut me. However, don't apologize; you're forgiven!"

"Most amiable of you to say so, Sir Charles!" perfunctorily.

"Not at all! Especially as our meeting is quite apropos. Obliged to run
up to town on a little matter of business; but, thank goodness, it's
done. Never saw London more deserted. Dined at the club, nobody there.
Supped at the hotel, dining-room empty. Strolled up Piccadilly, not a
soul to be seen. That is," he added, "no one whom one has seen before,
which is the same thing. But how did you enjoy your trip to the
continent?"

"It was not exactly a trip for pleasure," returned the other with a
slight accent of constraint.

"Ah, yes; so I understood. But fancy going to the continent on business!
One usually goes for--which reminds me, how would you like to go back
into the country with me?"

"I? It is impossible at the moment for--"

But Sir Charles seemed not to listen. "Deuced dull journey for a man to
take alone; good deal of it by co