wn; her beauty, if attenuated, was sufficient; while
her discriminating taste amounted to a virtue. The Honorable Percival
proffered his hand, and was accepted. Hascombe Hall rang with applause.

All might have been well had not mother and daughter been pressed to
seal the compact by a closer intimacy in a ten-days' visit at the hall.
The young people were allowed to bask uninterrupted in the light of each
other's perfections, and the result was disastrous. Two persons who have
achieved distinction as soloists do not take kindly to duets. A few days
after the Vevays' return to London, Lady Hortense wrote a perfectly
worded note, and asked to be released from the engagement.

The utterly preposterous fact that a Hascombe of Hascombe Hall had been
jilted was too amazing a circumstance to be concealed, and the county
buzzed with rumors. The Honorable Percival, whose pride had sustained
a compound fracture, set sail immediately for America. After a hurried
trip across the continent, he was embarking again, this time for
Hong-Kong, where a sympathetic married sister held out embracing arms,
and a promise of refuge from wagging tongues.

As he moved languidly down the deck and sank into the steamer-chair that
bore his name, he assured himself for the fortieth time since leaving
England that life bored him to tears. He had sounded its joys and its
sorrows, he had exhausted its thrills; it was like a scenic railway
over which he was compelled to ride after every detail had become
monotonously familiar. There was nothing more for him to learn about
life, nothing more for him to feel. At least that is what the Honorable
Percival thought. But when one reckons too confidently on having
exhausted the varieties of human experience, one is apt to get a jolt.

Carefully selecting a cigarette from a gold case, he struck a light,
and, after a whiff or two, lay back and, closing his eyes on the stir
and confusion, gave himself up to painful reflections. His shrunken
self-esteem, like a feathered thing exposed to wet weather, was
clamoring for a sunny spot in which to expand to natural proportions.
Had he been able to remain at home, the unending chorus of feminine
praise would soon have dried his draggled feathers and left him preening
himself contentedly in the comforting assurance that Lady Hortense was
in no way worthy of him. But being confronted thus suddenly with the
necessity of supplying his egotism with all its nourishment, he