ious.

When he was tired of that and turned away from the blue-grey dusk, the
luxurious comfort of the room struck him afresh. 'You've made yourself
uncommonly comfortable here,' he said appreciatively, as he settled
down again in his velvet-pile chair.

'Well, I flatter myself I've improved the look of the place since you
saw it last. Poor Holroyd, you see, never cared to go in for this kind
of thing. Queer reserved fellow, wasn't he?'

'Very,' said Mark; and then, with the perverse impulse which drives us
to test dangerous ice, he added: 'Didn't you say, though, the other
evening that he had no secrets from you?' ('Trying to pump _me_, are
you?' thought the other; 'but you don't!') 'Did I?' he answered,
'sometimes I fancy, now and then, that I knew less of him than I
thought I did. For instance, he was very busy for a long time before
he left England over something or other, but he never told me what it
was. I used to catch him writing notes and making extracts and so
on.... _You_ were a great friend of his, Ashburn, weren't you? Do you
happen to know whether he was engaged on some work which would account
for that, now? Did he ever mention to you that he was writing a book,
for instance?'

'Never,' said Mark; 'did he--did he hint that to you?'

'Never got a word out of him; but I daresay you, who knew him best,
will laugh when I tell you this, I always had my suspicions that he
was writing a novel.'

'A novel?' echoed Mark; 'Holroyd! Excuse me, my dear fellow, I really
can't help laughing--it does seem such a comic idea.'

And he laughed boisterously, overcome by the humour of the notion,
until Caffyn said: 'Well, I didn't know him as well as you did, I
suppose, but I shouldn't have thought it was so devilish funny as all
that!' For Caffyn was a little irritated that the other should believe
him to be duped by all this, and that he could not venture as yet to
undeceive him. It made him viciously inclined to jerk the string
harder yet, and watch Mark's contortions.

'He wasn't that sort of man,' said Mark, when he had had his laugh
out; 'poor dear old fellow, he'd have been as amused at the idea as I
am.'

'But this success of yours would have pleased him, wouldn't it?' said
Caffyn.

For a moment Mark was cut as deeply by this as the speaker intended;
he could give no other answer than a sigh, which was perfectly
genuine. Caffyn affected to take this as an expression of incredulity.
'Surely you don't dou