uld leave with the
other guests on the Tuesday, after lunch, having sent his servant up to
London in the morning to be out of the way.

Then he would sleep that night in Upminster, getting his servant to
leave what luggage he required there--it was the junction for the main
line to London, and so that would be easy. A motor could be hired, and
in it, on the Wednesday, he would come to the oak avenue gate, as that
was far at the other side of the park upon the western road; there he
would arrange that Halcyone should be waiting for him with some small
box, and they would go over to Bristol, be married, and then go on to a
romantic spot he knew of in Wales, and there spend a week of bliss!

By the time he got thus far in his meditations he felt intoxicated
again, and Mr. Carlyon, who was watching him as he sat there in his
chair reading the _Times_ opposite him, wondered what made him suddenly
clasp his hands and draw in his breath and smile in that idiotic way
while he gazed into space!

Then there would be the afterwards. Of course, that would be blissful,
too. Oh! if he could only claim her before all the world how glorious it
would be--but for the present that was hopeless, and at all events her
life with him would not be more retired than the one of monotony which
she led at La Sarthe Chase, and would have his tenderest love to
brighten it. He would take a tiny house for her somewhere--one of those
very old-fashioned ones shut in with a garden still left in Chelsea,
near the Embankment--and there he would spend every moment of his spare
time, and try to make up to her for her isolation. Well arranged, the
world need not know of this--Halcyone would never be _exigeante_--or if
it did develop a suspicion, ministers before his day had been known to
have had--_cheres amies_.

But as this thought came he jumped from his chair. It was, when faced in
a concrete fashion, hideously unpalatable as touching his pure, fair
star.

"You are rather restless to-day, John," the Professor said, as his old
pupil went hastily towards the open window and looked out.

"Yes," said John Derringham. "It is going to rain, and I must go to
Bristol this afternoon. I have to see a man on business."

Cheiron's left penthouse went up into his forehead.

"Matters complicating?" was all he said.

"Yes, the very devil," responded John Derringham.

"Beginning to feel the noose already, poor lad?"

"Er--no, not exactly," and he turned roun