ady Constance?" he said, affecting indifference.

"And Mrs. Mulholland. I believe I see their carriage."

And Falloden, peering into the stormy twilight, opened the garden door
and passed out into the rain.

Otto remained motionless, bent over the fire. Sorell was talking with
the ex-scout in the dining-room, impressing on him certain medical
directions. Radowitz suddenly felt himself singularly forlorn, and
deserted. Of course, Falloden and Constance would marry. He always knew
it. He would have served to keep them together, and give them
opportunities of meeting, when they might have easily drifted entirely
apart. He laughed to himself as he thought of Connie's impassioned
cry--"I shall never, never, marry him!" Such are the vows of women. She
would marry him; and then what would he, Otto, matter to her or to
Falloden any longer? He would have been no doubt a useful peg and
pretext; but he was not going to intrude on their future bliss. He
thought he would go back to Paris. One might as well die there
as anywhere.

There were murmurs of talk and laughter in the hall. He sat still,
hugging his melancholy. But when the door opened, he rose quickly,
instinctively; and, at the sight of the girl coming in so timidly behind
Mrs. Mulholland, her eyes searching the half-lit room, and the smile, in
them and on her lips, held back till she knew whether her poor friend
could bear with smiles, Otto's black hour began to lift. He let himself,
at least, be welcomed and petted; and when fresh tea had been brought
in, and the room was full of talk, he lay back in his chair, listening,
the deep lines in his forehead gradually relaxing. He was better, he
declared, a great deal better; in fact there was very little at all the
matter with him. His symphony was to be given at the Royal College of
Music early in the year. Everybody had been awfully decent about it. And
he had begun a nocturne that amused him. As for the doctors, he repeated
petulantly that they were all fools--it was only a question of degree.
He intended to manage his life as he pleased in spite of them.

Connie sat on a high stool near him while he talked. She seemed to be
listening, but he once or twice thought, resentfully, that it was a
perfunctory listening. He wondered what else she was thinking about.

The tea was cleared away. And presently the three others had
disappeared. Otto and Constance were left alone.

"I have been reading so much about Poland latel