nd quarrels. She expects
me to play Harry Thornhill off the stage, I suppose."

Mangan looked at him for some time.

"Even between friends," he said, slowly, "there are some things it is
difficult to talk about with safety. Of course you know what an outsider
would say: that you had got into a devil of a mess; that you had
blundered into an engagement with a woman whom you find you don't want
to marry."

"Well, is there anything uncommon in that?" Lionel demanded. "Is that
an unusual experience in human life? But I don't admit as much, in my
case. I am quite willing to marry her, so long as she keeps her temper,
and doesn't expect me to play the fool. I dare say we shall get on well
enough, like other people, after the fateful deed is done. In the
meantime," he added, with a forced laugh--"in the meantime, I find
myself now and again wishing I was a sailor brave and bold, careering
round the Cape of Good Hope in a gale of wind, and with no loftier
aspiration in my mind than a pint of rum and a well-filled pipe."

"Faith, I think that's just where you ought to be," said Mangan, dryly,
"instead of in this town of London, at the present moment. I declare
you've quite bewildered me. If you had told me you were engaged to that
tall salmon-fishing girl--you used to talk about her a good deal, you
know--or to that fascinating young Italian creature--and I've seen
before now how easily the gentle friend and companion can be transformed
into a sweetheart--I should have been ready with all kinds of pretty
speeches and good wishes. But Miss Burgoyne of the New Theatre? Linn, my
boy, I've discovered what's the matter with you, and I can prescribe an
absolutely certain cure."

"What is it?"

"The cure? You have partly suggested it yourself. You must go at once
and take your passage in a sailing ship for Australia. You can stay
there for a time and examine the colony; of course you'll write a book
about it, like everybody else. Then you make your way to San Francisco,
and accept a three-months' engagement there. You come on to New York,
and accept a three-months' engagement there. And when you return to
England you will find that all your troubles have vanished, and that you
are once again the Linn Moore we all of us used to know."

A wild fancy flashed through Lionel's brain; what if in these far
wanderings he were suddenly to encounter Nina? In vain--in vain; Nina
had become for him but a shadow, a ghost, with no voice to c