, before marriage, to
confess her weakness unreservedly to the man who has caused it--had
sealed her lips. "When he is a little less violent and a little more
humble," she thought, "perhaps I may tell him."

So it fell out that Amelius took his way through the streets, a
mystified and an angry man.

Arrived in sight of the hotel, he stopped, and looked about him.

It was impossible to disguise from himself that a lurking sense of
regret was making itself felt, in his present frame of mind, when he
thought of Simple Sally. In all probability, he would have quarrelled
with any man who had accused him of actually lamenting the girl's
absence, and wanting her back again. He happened to recollect her
artless blue eyes, with their vague patient look, and her quaint
childish questions put so openly in so sweet a voice--and that was
all. Was there anything reprehensible, if you please, in an act of
remembrance? Comforting himself with these considerations, he moved on
again a step or two--and stopped once more. In his present humour,
he shrank from facing Rufus. The American read him like a book; the
American would ask irritating questions. He turned his back on the
hotel, and looked at his watch. As he took it out, his finger and thumb
touched something else in his waistcoat-pocket. It was the card that
Regina had given to him--the card of the cottage to let. He had nothing
to do, and nowhere to go. Why not look at the cottage? If it proved
to be not worth seeing, the Zoological Gardens were in the
neighbourhood--and there are periods in a man's life when he finds the
society that walks on four feet a welcome relief from the society that
walks on two.

It was a fairly fine day. He turned northward towards the Regent's Park.

The cottage was in a by-road, just outside the park: a cottage in
the strictest sense of the word. A sitting-room, a library, and a
bedroom--all of small proportions--and, under them a kitchen and two
more rooms, represented the whole of the little dwelling from top to
bottom. It was simply and prettily furnished; and it was completely
surrounded by its own tiny plot of garden-ground. The library especially
was a perfect little retreat, looking out on the back garden; peaceful
and shady, and adorned with bookcases of old carved oak.

Amelius had hardly looked round the room, before his inflammable brain
was on fire with a new idea. Other idle men in trouble had found the
solace and the occupation of