ld
up the telegram, bent his head and laid a kiss upon the pink paper.

But that is by no means all. Now I come, to the Richborough story,
which all London that is as old as I am remembers. That part of
London, it may be, will not read this book; or if it does, will not
object to the recall of a case which absorbed it in 1886-87. I am not
going to be indiscreet. The lady married, and the lady left England.
Moreover, naturally, I give no names; but if I did I don't see that
there is anything to be ashamed of in what she was pleased to do with
her hand and person. It was startling to us of those days, it might be
startling in these; what was more than startling was the manner in
which the thing was done. That is known to very few persons indeed.

I had seen enough upon that April day, whose events form my prelude,
to give me remembrance of the handsome telegraph boy. The next time I
saw him, which was near midnight in July--the place Hyde Park--I knew
him at once.

I had been sharing in Prince's Gate, with a dull company, an
interminable dinner, one of those at which you eat twice as much as
you intend, or desire, because there is really nothing else to do. On
one side of me I had had a dowager whom I entirely failed to interest,
on the other, a young person who only cared to talk with her left-hand
neighbour. There was a reception afterward to which I had to stop, so
that I could not make my escape till eleven or more. The night was
very hot and it had been raining; but such air as there was was balm
after the still furnace of the rooms. I decided immediately to walk to
my lodging in Camden Town, entered by Prince's Gate, crossed the
Serpentine Bridge and took a bee-line for the Marble Arch. It was
cloudy, but not at all dark. I could see all the ankle-high railings
which beset the unwary passenger and may at any moment break his legs
and his nose, imperil his dignity and ruin his hat. Dimly ahead of me,
upon a broad stretch of grass, I presently became aware of a
concourse. There was no sound to go by, and the light afforded me no
definite forms; the luminous haze was blurred; but certainly people
were there, a multitude of people. I was surprised, but not alarmed.
Save for an occasional wastrel of civilisation, incapable of
degradation and concerned only for sleep, the park is wont to be a
desert at that hour; but the hum of the traffic, the flashing cab
lamps, never quite out of sight, prevent fear. Far from being