ought there was a
villain on earth capable of shooting that poor inoffensive dog, I'd--Why
_should_ they shoot him, Lilian? Tell me that! I--I hope you won't
let me hear you talk like that again. _You_ don't think he's shot, eh,
Weatherhead?"

I said--Heaven forgive me!--that I thought it highly improbable.

"He's not dead!" cried Mrs. Currie. "If he were dead I should know it
somehow--I'm sure I should! But I'm certain he's alive. Only last night
I had such a beautiful dream about him. I thought he came back to us,
Mr. Weatherhead, driving up in a hansom-cab, and he was just the same
as ever--only he wore blue spectacles, and the shaved part of him was
painted a bright red. And I woke up with the joy--so, you know, it's
sure to come true!"

It will be easily understood what torture conversations like these were
to me, and how I hated myself as I sympathised and spoke encouraging
words concerning the dog's recovery, when I knew all the time he
was lying hid under my garden mould. But I took it as a part of my
punishment, and bore it all uncomplainingly; practice even made me an
adept in the art of consolation--I believe I really was a great comfort
to them.

I had hoped that they would soon get over the first bitterness of their
loss, and that Bingo would be first replaced and then forgotten in the
usual way; but there seemed no signs of this coming to pass.

The poor colonel was too plainly fretting himself ill about it; he went
pottering about forlornly, advertising, searching, and seeing people,
but all, of course, to no purpose; and it told upon him. He was more
like a man whose only son and heir had been stolen than an Anglo-Indian
officer who had lost a poodle. I had to affect the liveliest interest
in all his inquiries and expeditions, and to listen to and echo the most
extravagant eulogies of the departed; and the wear and tear of so much
duplicity made me at last almost as ill as the colonel himself.

I could not help seeing that Lilian was not nearly so much impressed
by my elaborate concern as her relatives, and sometimes I detected
an incredulous look in her frank brown eyes that made me very uneasy.
Little by little, a rift widened between us, until at last in despair
I determined to know the worst before the time came when it would be
hopeless to speak at all. I chose a Sunday evening as we were walking
across the green from church in the golden dusk, and then I ventured to
speak to her of my love.