ad been unusually warm. Of all oppressive summers a hot
summer in London is the hardest to endure. The little exercise that
Sydney could take was, as Randal knew, deferred until the evening. On
asking for her, he was surprised to hear that she had gone out.

"Is she walking?" he asked, "on a day such as this?"

No: she was too much overcome by the heat to be able to walk. The
landlady's boy had been sent to fetch a cab, and he had heard Miss
Westerfield tell the driver to go to Lincoln's Inn Fields.

The address at once reminded Randal of Mr. Sarrazin. On the chance of
making a discovery, he went to the lawyer's office. It had struck him as
being just possible that Sydney might have called there for the second
time; and, on making inquiry, he found that his surmise was correct.
Miss Westerfield had called, and had gone away again more than an hour
since.

Having mentioned this circumstance, good Mr. Sarrazin rather abruptly
changed the subject.

He began to talk of the weather, and, like everybody else, he complained
of the heat. Receiving no encouragement so far, he selected politics as
his next topic. Randal was unapproachably indifferent to the state of
parties, and the urgent necessity for reform. Still bent, as it
seemed, on preventing his visitor from taking a leading part in the
conversation, Mr. Sarrazin tried the exercise of hospitality next.
He opened his cigar-case, and entered eagerly into the merits of his
cigars; he proposed a cool drink, and described the right method of
making it as distinguished from the wrong. Randal was not thirsty, and
was not inclined to smoke. Would the pertinacious lawyer give way
at last? In appearance, at least, he submitted to defeat. "You want
something of me, my friend," he said, with a patient smile. "What is
it?"

"I want to know why Miss Westerfield called on you?"

Randal flattered himself that he had made a prevaricating reply simply
impossible. Nothing of the sort! Mr. Sarrazin slipped through his
fingers once more. The unwritten laws of gallantry afforded him a refuge
now.

"The most inviolate respect," he solemnly declared, "is due to a lady's
confidence--and, what is more, to a young lady's confidence--and, what
is more yet, to a pretty young lady's confidence. The sex, my dear
fellow! Must I recall your attention to what is due to the sex?"

This little outbreak of the foreign side of his friend's character was
no novelty to Randal. He remained as indiffe