. Horace Bellingham good-morning,
and good-bye; he would not trouble him again, he said, before sailing.
But Mr. Bellingham went to the door with him.

"Come and see me before you go--Wednesday morning; I am up at six, you
know. I shall be very glad to see you. I am like the Mexican donkey that
died of _congojas ajenas_--died of other people's troubles. People
always come to me when they are in difficulties." The old gentleman
stood looking after Claudius as he strode away. Then he screwed up his
eyes at the sun, sneezed with evident satisfaction, and disappeared
within, closing the street door behind him.

"Some day I will write my memoirs," he said to himself, as he sat down.

Claudius was in a frame of mind which he would have found it hard to
describe. The long conversation with Mr. Bellingham had been the first
intimation he had received of Margaret's disaster, and the same
interview had decided him to act at once in her behalf--in other words,
to return to Europe immediately, after a week's stay in New York,
leaving behind all that was most dear to him. This resolution had
formed itself instantaneously in his mind, and it never occurred to him,
either then or later, that he could have done anything else in the
world. It certainly did not occur to him that he was doing anything
especially praiseworthy in sacrificing his love to its object, in
leaving Margaret for a couple of months, and enduring all that such a
separation meant, in order to serve her interests more effectually. He
knew well enough what he was undertaking--the sleepless nights, the
endless days, the soul-compelling heaviness of solitude, and the deadly
sinking at the heart, all which he should endure daily for sixty
days--he could not be back before that. He knew it all, for he had
suffered it all, during those four and twenty hours on the yacht that
followed his first wild speech of love. But Claudius's was a knightly
soul, and when he served he served wholly, without reservation. Had the
dark-browed Countess guessed half the nobleness of purpose her tall
lover carried in his breast, who knows but she might have been sooner
moved herself. But how could she know? She suspected, indeed, that he
was above his fellows, and she never attributed bad motives to his
actions, as she would unhesitatingly have done with most men; for she
had learned lessons of caution in her life. Who steals hearts steals
souls, wherefore it behoves woman to look that the l