the
house?" said he. "Nobody could see you. I have been driving father to
the factories to-day, and he is not so well after it, and my mother is
with him. I have to be back at twelve, so jump in and come out with me."

I obeyed him. It was but two years since we had parted, but he had aged
and seemed quite different from the Jack Holt of former times. He was
roughly dressed, and, though scrupulously neat and shaven, looked, I am
sure, fifteen years my senior. He touched his whip, and the mare plunged
down the avenue at a pace too disconcerting to allow either of us to
speak for a few moments, and we were at least a mile away before her
swinging canter subsided into a trot.

"What is her name?" I asked, laughing. "It ought to be Mary Magdalen,
for she has seven devils in her this morning."

"Don't you remember the Duchess?" he inquired with a flicker of
something like a smile crossing his heavy face. "You christened her
yourself."

I remembered the Duchess. The yearling colt had been given to him on his
sixteenth birthday. He wanted to call her Georgy, but his mother forbade
it: so we named her after that duchess of Devonshire who had made the
name famous.

"You'll find I have forgotten nothing," I replied, "but my thoughts are
such a medley that I can't settle them at once."

"When did you return?"

"Only four days ago: I have not seen my mother yet."

"And you have come to look me up? Floyd, that is kind."

Something in his cool, pleasant tones touched me powerfully. "I knew
nothing about you," I blurted out. "Why, Jack, at this minute I'm not
sure if you are married or not."

"I am not married," he said softly. He was not used to reply so quickly,
and I waited for him to speak before I questioned him further. "I am
well," he said presently, "and mother is in her usual health. Have you
heard about my father?"

"Nothing. Both Harry and I have famished for news of you."

I could see a little trouble in his face: he would have preferred that
somebody else should have broken his news to me. But he sighed, and went
on without flinching. "My father had a paralytic stroke in December," he
explained in his deliberate, gentle voice. "When once our eyes were
opened we could easily comprehend that for months his mind had been
failing. When the bad news came the accumulation of trouble was too much
for him. We thought at first nothing could save him, but he rallied
physically. His mind has quite gone, however," Jac