rmation was, he thought, Eugene Lane or his mother; and
on the afternoon of his arrival in town--on the same day, that is, as
Eugene had surprised Sir Roderick at breakfast--he knocked at the door
of Eugene's house in Upper Berkeley Street, and inquired if Eugene were
at home. The man told him that Mr. Lane had returned only that morning,
from America, he believed, and had left the house an hour ago, on his
way to Territon Park; he added that he believed Mr. Lane had received a
telegram from Lord Rickmansworth inviting him to go down. Mrs. Lane was
at Millstead Manor.

Stafford was annoyed at missing Eugene, but not surprised or disturbed
to hear of his visit to Territon Park. Eugene did not strike him as a
possible rival. It may be doubted whether in his present frame of mind
he would have looked on any man's rivalry as dangerous, but of course he
was entirely ignorant of the new development of affairs, and supposed
Eugene to be still the affianced husband of Miss Bernard. The only way
the news affected him was by dispelling the slight hope he had
entertained of finding that Claudia had already returned to London.

He went back to his hotel, wrote a single line to Eugene, asking him to
tell him Claudia's address, if he knew it, and then went for a walk in
the Park to pass the restless hours away. It was a dull evening, and the
earliest of the fogs had settled on the devoted city. A small drizzle
of rain and the thickening blackness had cleared the place of
saunterers, and Stafford, who prolonged his walk, apparently unconscious
of his surroundings, had the dreary path by the Serpentine nearly to
himself. As the fog grew denser and night fell, the spot became a
desert, and its chill gloom began to be burdensome even to his
prepossessed mind. He stopped and gazed as far as the mist let him over
the water, which lay smooth and motionless, like a sheet of opaque
glass; the opposite bank was shrouded from his view, and imagination
allowed him to think himself standing on the shore of some almost
boundless lake. Seen under such conditions, the Serpentine put off the
cheerful vulgarity of its everyday aspect, and exercised over the spirit
of the watcher the same fascination as a mountain tarn or some deep,
quick-flowing stream. "Come hither and be at rest," it seemed to
whisper, and Stafford, responsive to the subtle invitation, for a moment
felt as if to die in the thought of his mistress would be as sweet as to
live in her