ated by these days of impatience and bereavement. He gave
little heed to the play; his thoughts were elsewhere, and, while they
rambled, his eyes wandered round the house. Suddenly, on the other
side of it, he beheld Captain Lovelock, seated squarely in his
orchestra-stall, but, if Bernard was not mistaken, paying as little
attention to the stage as he himself had done. The Captain's eyes, it
is true, were fixed upon the scene; his head was bent a little, his
magnificent beard rippled over the expanse of his shirt-front. But
Bernard was not slow to see that his gaze was heavy and opaque, and
that, though he was staring at the actresses, their charms were lost
upon him. He saw that, like himself, poor Lovelock had matter for
reflection in his manly breast, and he concluded that Blanche's
ponderous swain was also suffering from a sense of disjunction. Lovelock
sat in the same posture all the evening, and that his imagination had
not projected itself into the play was proved by the fact that during
the entractes he gazed with the same dull fixedness at the curtain.
Bernard forebore to interrupt him; we know that he was not at this
moment socially inclined, and he judged that the Captain was as little
so, inasmuch as causes even more imperious than those which had operated
in his own case must have been at the bottom of his sudden appearance in
London. On leaving the theatre, however, Bernard found himself detained
with the crowd in the vestibule near the door, which, wide open to the
street, was a scene of agitation and confusion. It had come on to rain,
and the raw dampness mingled itself with the dusky uproar of the Strand.
At last, among the press of people, as he was passing out, our hero
became aware that he had been brought into contact with Lovelock,
who was walking just beside him. At the same moment Lovelock noticed
him--looked at him for an instant, and then looked away. But he
looked back again the next instant, and the two men then uttered that
inarticulate and inexpressive exclamation which passes for a sign of
greeting among gentlemen of the Anglo-Saxon race, in their moments of
more acute self-consciousness.

"Oh, are you here?" said Bernard. "I thought you were in Paris."

"No; I ain't in Paris," Lovelock answered with some dryness. "Tired of
the beastly hole!"

"Oh, I see," said Bernard. "Excuse me while I put up my umbrella."

He put up his umbrella, and from under it, the next moment, he saw the
Capt