into the seat opposite his wife and her sister, the
former looked up from her book, yawning ever so faintly, and asked:

"Are you enjoying your honeymoon, Roxbury?"

"Immensely!" he exclaimed, but not until he had searched for and caught
Connie's truant gaze. "Aren't we?" he asked of Miss Fowler, his eyes
dancing. She smiled encouragingly.

"I think you are such a nice man to have about," commented Mrs.
Medcroft, this time yawning freely and stretching her fine young arms in
the luxury of home contentment.

Brock went to bed early, in Vienna that night--tired but happy, caring
not what the morrow brought forth so long as it continued to provide him
with a sister-in-law and a wife who was devoted--to another man.

CHAPTER III

THE DISTANT COUSINS

The end of the week found Brock quite thoroughly domesticated--to use an
expression supplied by his new sister-in-law. True, he had gone through
some trying ordeals and had lost not a little of his sense of locality,
but he was rapidly recovering it as the pathway became easier and less
obscure. At first he was irritatingly remiss in answering to the name of
Medcroft; but, to justify the stupidity, it is only necessary to say
that he had fallen into a condition which scarcely permitted him to know
his own name, much less that of another. He was under the spell!
Wherefore it did not matter at all what name he went by: he would have
answered as readily to one as the other.

He blandly ignored telegrams and letters addressed to Roxbury Medcroft,
and once he sat like a lump, with everyone staring at him, when the
chairman of the architects' convention asked if Mr. Medcroft had
anything to say on the subject under discussion. He was forced, in some
confusion, to attribute his heedlessness to a life-long defect in
hearing. Thereafter it was his punishment to have his name and fragments
of conversation hurled about in tones so stentorian that he blushed for
very shame. In the Bristol, in the Kaerntner-Ring, in the Lichtenstein
Gallery, in the Gardens--no matter where he went--if he were to be
accosted by any of the genial architects it was always in a voice that
attracted attention; he could have heard them if they had been a block
away. It became a habit with him to instinctively lift his hand to his
ear when one of them hove in sight, having seen him first.

"That's what I get for being a liar," he lamented dolefully. Constance
had just whispered her condolences.