owly climbed into the
carriage.

'Ah, my dear Lawford, when you are my age,' she called back to him,
groping her way into the rather musty gloom, 'you'll dream such dreams
for yourself. Life's not what's just the fashion. And there are queerer
things to be seen and heard just quietly in one's solitude than this
busy life gives us time to discover. But as for my mystifying Bewley
acquaintance--I confess I cannot make head or tail of him.'

'Was he,' said Lawford rather vaguely, looking up into the dim white
face that with its plumes filled nearly the whole carriage window, 'was
his face very unpleasing?'

She raised a gloved hand. 'It has haunted me, haunted me, Mr Lawford;
its--its conflict! Poor fellow; I hope, I do hope, he faced his trouble
out. But I shall never see him again.'

He squeezed the trembling, kindly old hand. 'I bet, Miss Sinnet,' he
said earnestly, 'even your having thought kindly of the poor beggar
eased his mind--whoever he may have been. I assure you, assure you of
that.'

'Ay, but I did more than THINK,' replied the old lady with a chuckle
that might have seemed even a little derisive if it had not been so
profoundly magnanimous.

He watched the old black fly roll slowly off, and still smiling at Miss
Sinnet's inscrutable finesse went back into the house. 'And now, my
friend,' he said, addressing peacefully the thronging darkness, 'the
time's nearly up for me to go too.'

He had made up his mind. Or, rather, it seemed as if in the unregarded
silences of this last long talk his mind had made up itself. Only among
impossibilities had he the shadow of a choice. In this old haunted
house, amid this shallow turmoil no practicable clue could show itself
of a way out. He would go away for a while.

He left the door ajar behind him for the moments still left, and
stood for a while thinking. Then, lamp in hand, he descended into the
breakfast-room for pen, ink, and paper. He sat for some time in that
underground calm, nibbling his pen like a harassed and self-conscious
schoolboy. At last he began:

'MY DEAR SHEILA,--I must tell you, to begin with, that the CHANGE has
now all passed away. I am--as near as man can be--completely myself
again. And next: that I overheard all that was said to-night in the
dining-room.

'I'm sorry for listening; but it's no good going over all that now. Here
I am, and, as you said, for Alice's sake we must make the best of it. I
am going away for a while, to get, if