t wasn't for his tan, he'd look really ill. The boy's eyes are so
pathetic; and he used to have such a nice smile in them."

The Colonel, who was fastening her hooks, paused in an operation that
required concentration.

"It's a thousand pities," he muttered, "that he hasn't any work to do.
That puddling about with clay or whatever he does is no good at all."
And slowly fastening one hook, he unhooked several others.

Mrs. Ercott went on:

"And I saw Olive, when she thought I wasn't looking; it was just as if
she'd taken off a mask. But Robert Cramier will never put up with it.
He's in love with her still; I watched him. It's tragic, John."

The Colonel let his hands fall from the hooks.

"If I thought that," he said, "I'd do something."

"If you could, it would not be tragic."

The Colonel stared. There was always SOMETHING to be done.

"You read too many novels," he said, but without spirit.

Mrs. Ercott smiled, and made no answer to an aspersion she had heard
before.

XI

When Lennan reached his rooms again after that encounter with the
Ercotts, he found in his letterbox a visiting card: "Mrs. Doone" "Miss
Sylvia Doone," and on it pencilled the words: "Do come and see us before
we go down to Hayle--Sylvia." He stared blankly at the round handwriting
he knew so well.

Sylvia! Nothing perhaps could have made so plain to him how in this
tornado of his passion the world was drowned. Sylvia! He had almost
forgotten her existence; and yet, only last year, after he definitely
settled down in London, he had once more seen a good deal of her; and
even had soft thoughts of her again--with her pale-gold hair, her true
look, her sweetness. Then they had gone for the winter to Algiers for
her mother's health.

When they came back, he had already avoided seeing her, though that was
before Olive went to Monte Carlo, before he had even admitted his own
feeling. And since--he had not once thought of her. Not once! The world
had indeed vanished. "Do come and see us--Sylvia." The very notion was
an irritation. No rest from aching and impatience to be had that way.

And then the idea came to him: Why not kill these hours of waiting for
to-morrow's meeting by going on the river passing by her cottage? There
was still one train that he could catch.

He reached the village after dark, and spent the night at the inn; got
up early next morning, took a boat, and pulled down-stream. The bluffs
of the opposite bank were w