emed to gain, a
complete absorption. The cloudy disquiet of the last few hours
appeared to have passed away,--to have been, indeed, only a fugitive
and transitory thing.

At half-past four his servant brought in a small tea-equipage--a
silver tray, with an old blue Worcester teapot and cup, and a quaintly
cut glass cream-jug. He made his tea, and drank it with his pen still
in his hand. He had scarcely turned back to his work, before the same
servant re-entered carrying a frock coat, an immaculately brushed silk
hat, and a fresh bunch of Neapolitan violets. For a moment Matravers
hesitated; then he laid down his pen, changed his coat, and once more
passed out into the streets, more brilliant than ever now with the
afternoon sunshine. He joined the throng of people leisurely making
their way towards the Park!

CHAPTER VI

For nearly half an hour he sat in his usual place under the trees,
watching with indifferent eyes the constant stream of carriages
passing along the drive. It seemed to him only a few hours since he
had sat there before, almost in the same spot, a solitary figure in
the cold, grey twilight, yet watching then, even as he was watching
now, for that small victoria with its single occupant whose soft dark
eyes had met his so often with a frank curiosity which she had never
troubled to conceal. Something of that same perturbation of spirit
which had driven him then out into the dawn-lit streets, was upon him
once more, only with a very real and tangible difference. The grey
half-lights, the ghostly shadows, and the faint wind sounding in the
tree-tops like the rising and falling of a midnight sea upon some
lonely shore, had given to his early morning dreams an indefiniteness
which they could scarcely hope to possess now. He himself was a living
unit of this gay and brilliant world, whose conversation and light
laughter filled the sunlit air around him, whose skirts were brushing
against his knees, and whose jargon fell upon his ears with a familiar
and a kindly sound. There was no possibility here for such a wave of
passion,--he could call it nothing else,--as had swept through him,
when he had first read that brief message from the woman, who had
already become something of a disturbing element in his seemly life.
Yet under a calm exterior he was conscious of a distinct tremor of
excitement when her carriage drew up within a few feet of him, and
obeying her mute but smiling command, he rose and