XXII

_In which Professor Nicolovius drops a Letter on the Floor, and
Queed conjectures that Happiness sometimes comes to Men wearing a
Strange Face._

Queed sat alone in the sitting-room of the Duke of Gloucester Street
house. His afternoon's experiences had interested him largely. By subtle
and occult processes which defied his analysis, what he had seen and
heard had proved mysteriously disturbing--all this outpouring of
irrational sentiment in which he had no share. So had his conversation
with the girl disturbed him. He was in a condition of mental unrest,
undefined but acute; odds and ends of curious thought kicked about
within him, challenging him to follow them down to unexplored depths.
But he was paying no attention to them now.

He sat in the sitting-room, wondering how Nicolovius had ever happened
to think of that story about the Fenian refugee.

For Queed had been gradually driven to that unpleasant point. While
living in the old man's house, he was, despite his conscientious
efforts, virtually spying upon him.

The Fenian story had always had its questionable points; but so long as
the two men were merely chance fellow-boarders, it did as well as any
other. Now that they lived together, however, the multiplying
suggestions that the old professor was something far other than he
pretended became rather important. The young man could not help being
aware that Nicolovius neither looked nor talked in the slightest degree
like an Irishman. He could not help being certain that an Irishman who
had fled to escape punishment for a political crime, in 1882, could have
safely returned to his country long ago; and would undoubtedly have kept
up relations with his friends overseas in the meantime. Nor could he
help being struck with such facts as that Nicolovius, while apparently
little interested in the occasional cables about Irish affairs, had
become seemingly absorbed in the three days' doings of the United
Confederate Veterans.

Now it was entirely all right for the old man to have a secret, and keep
it. There was not the smallest quarrel on that score. But it was not in
the least all right for one man to live with another, pretending to
believe in him, when in reality he was doubting and questioning him at
every move. The want of candor involved in his present relations with
Nicolovius continually fretted Queed's conscience. Ought he not in
common honesty to tell the old man that he c