lysis before the rise of modern ethical schools, fictitious
as it was in general application, would have almost hit off the truth as
regards Captain De Stancy. Removed to some half-known century, his deeds
would have won a picturesqueness of light and shade that might have made
him a fascinating subject for some gallery of illustrious historical
personages. It was this tendency to moral chequer-work which accounted
for his varied bearings towards Dare.

Dare withdrew to take his departure. When he had gone a few steps,
despondent, he suddenly turned, and ran back with some excitement.

'Captain--he's coming on the tenth, don't they say? Well, four days
before the tenth comes the sixth. Have you forgotten what's fixed for
the sixth?'

'I had quite forgotten!'

'That day will be worth three months of quiet attentions: with luck,
skill, and a bold heart, what mayn't you do?'

Captain De Stancy's face softened with satisfaction.

'There is something in that; the game is not up after all. The sixth--it
had gone clean out of my head, by gad!'

V.

The cheering message from Paula to Somerset sped through the loophole
of Stancy Castle keep, over the trees, along the railway, under bridges,
across four counties--from extreme antiquity of environment to sheer
modernism--and finally landed itself on a table in Somerset's chambers
in the midst of a cloud of fog. He read it and, in the moment of
reaction from the depression of his past days, clapped his hands like a
child.

Then he considered the date at which she wanted to see him. Had she
so worded her despatch he would have gone that very day; but there was
nothing to complain of in her giving him a week's notice. Pure maiden
modesty might have checked her indulgence in a too ardent recall.

Time, however, dragged somewhat heavily along in the interim, and on the
second day he thought he would call on his father and tell him of his
success in obtaining the appointment.

The elder Mr. Somerset lived in a detached house in the north-west part
of fashionable London; and ascending the chief staircase the young
man branched off from the first landing and entered his father's
painting-room. It was an hour when he was pretty sure of finding the
well-known painter at work, and on lifting the tapestry he was not
disappointed, Mr. Somerset being busily engaged with his back towards
the door.

Art and vitiated nature were struggling like wrestlers in that
apartment, and