ur
desk. I've long since found out that sort of thing is a mistake."

CHAPTER V.

Morgan arrived rather late at Wimpole Street, for father and son had
dallied almost till evening. However, he was the earlier of the two,
and he took the opportunity of presenting Diana with the stamps he had
got together for her and of chatting with her about her collection and
her newest acquisitions. He was relieved to find that Mrs. Medhurst
gave him his usual warm welcome, but at the same time he felt rather
guilty about his unsuspected intention to cease all relations with the
family. This house was more associated with happiness for him than any
other place in the world; he had passed in it perhaps the best moments
of his life. He had always been a favourite with the Medhursts, and
they had believed in him and taken his part even in the early days
when he had been looked at askance in his own family.

Were oblivion of all else possible, he would have felt to-night
supremely happy, for that needed but the sole condition of his being
where he was. But he thought of the borrowed money in his pocket, of
the charred remains of his manuscripts, of his hopeless love for
Margaret, now so near him, speaking to him, of the vague future to
which he was going to abandon himself. And the comfort he could not
help finding here mingled strangely with the emotions that troubled
his spirit and gave him a quivering sense of unrest.

The link between him and the Medhursts had been from the first one of
more than ordinary friendship. For, some thirty years before, when
Mrs. Medhurst was only seventeen, Archibald Druce had been a suitor
for her hand. But her romance with John Medhurst had already begun,
and she waited to marry her true love seven years later. Though
Archibald married within a few years of his rejection, he had all but
kept Kate to her promise to be a sister to him all his life. Certainly
he had remained one of her most devoted admirers.

Mrs. Medhurst was still beautiful, and even Morgan admitted that she
was just the mother a girl like Margaret ought to have. Her face was
winning and sweet, and the simplicity of her attire held no suggestion
of severity. Morgan's eye was pleased by the quiet harmony of the gray
silk dress with its silver girdle and its touches of silver at the
throat and wrists.

Margaret herself was only just nineteen. Taller than her mother by
half a head, she was built with a slender grace and a rare