e brusque in manner than
usual that evening, and the article for the _Scientific Review_ made
little way. He threw down his pen at last, and leaned his head upon his
hands and wondered, staring at the unfinished page of manuscript with eyes
that saw no meaning in the sentences, whether any man born of woman had
ever been so great a fool as the man who had written them?

To have made that promise of secrecy to the dead traitor was an act of
sheer, quixotic folly. To have kept it was madness, nothing less. And yet
Saxham knew that he would keep it always. That if she ever learned the
truth, it would be hinted by the chance remark of some stranger, gathered
from a paragraph in some newspaper. There was a small-print line at the
bottom of the quarter-column devoted by the compilers of Whittinger's
"Peerage" to the Marquisate of Foltlebarre, which might have enlightened
her. He turned to it now, and read:

"Viscountess Beauvayse, Esther, dau: of Samuel Levah, Esq.,
of Finsbury, E.C., mar: June, 1899, the late John Basil
Edward Tobart, Lieut. Grey Hussars, 11th Viscount Beauvayse.
Killed in action during the defence of Gueldersdorp, Feb.,
1900, while atta: as Junior aide to the Staff of Colonel
Commanding H.M. Forces, leaving issue one dau: The Hon.
Alyse Rosabel Tobart, now aged eighteen months."

At the Clubs, Service and Civil, Saxham had heard the impromptu marriage
of the late John Basil Edward Tobart freely discussed. The story of his
subsequent entanglement "with some girl or other at Gueldersdorp" had been
mooted in his presence a dozen times by Society chatterers, whose
enjoyment of the scandal would have been pleasantly stimulated by the
knowledge that "Saxham, M.D., F.R.C.S., late Attached Medical Staff," was
married to the girl. But they did not know, and she ...

What use--what use in her knowing? Of what avail could be the melting of
the ice about her heart, the loosening of the fetters of her tongue, the
quickening of her nature, the miracle vouchsafed? Of none, now, for a
reason! Saxham told himself, in those hours when he propped his burning
forehead on his hands and looked into the starless night of his desolate
soul, that he had ceased even to desire that she should come to love him.
Far better that she should never know!

It was growing late, and he had promised to fetch her from the theatre.
The silver clock upon the mantelshelf chimed ten. He had stretched his
hand to the