NIFRED DARTIE."

Ugh! What bitter humbug! He remembered leaning over Winifred while she
copied what he had pencilled, and how she had said, laying down her pen,
"Suppose he comes, Soames!" in such a strange tone of voice, as if she
did not know her own mind. "He won't come," he had answered, "till he's
spent his money. That's why we must act at once." Annexed to the copy
of that letter was the original of Dartie's drunken scrawl from the
Iseeum Club. Soames could have wished it had not been so manifestly
penned in liquor. Just the sort of thing the Court would pitch on. He
seemed to hear the Judge's voice say: "You took this seriously!
Seriously enough to write him as you did? Do you think he meant it?"
Never mind! The fact was clear that Dartie had sailed and had not
returned. Annexed also was his cabled answer: "Impossible return.
Dartie." Soames shook his head. If the whole thing were not disposed of
within the next few months the fellow would turn up again like a bad
penny. It saved a thousand a year at least to get rid of him, besides
all the worry to Winifred and his father. 'I must stiffen Dreamer's
back,' he thought; 'we must push it on.'

Winifred, who had adopted a kind of half-mourning which became her fair
hair and tall figure very well, arrived in James' barouche drawn by
James' pair. Soames had not seen it in the City since his father retired
from business five years ago, and its incongruity gave him a shock.
'Times are changing,' he thought; 'one doesn't know what'll go next!'
Top hats even were scarcer. He enquired after Val. Val, said Winifred,
wrote that he was going to play polo next term. She thought he was in a
very good set. She added with fashionably disguised anxiety: "Will there
be much publicity about my affair, Soames? Must it be in the papers?
It's so bad for him, and the girls."

With his own calamity all raw within him, Soames answered:

"The papers are a pushing lot; it's very difficult to keep things out.
They pretend to be guarding the public's morals, and they corrupt them
with their beastly reports. But we haven't got to that yet. We're only
seeing Dreamer to-day on the restitution question. Of course he
understands that it's to lead to a divorce; but you must seem genuinely
anxious to get Dartie back--you might practice that attitude to-day."

Winifred sighed.

"Oh! What a clown Monty's been!" she said.

Soames gave her a sharp look. It was clear to him