d practical youthfulness to linen underclothing, combined with plenty
of fresh air. And after all, since letter-writing was hopeless, she did
go out to lunch with the guns. Claud remained alone and disconsolate by
the library fire. She was due to leave the house next day, and left,
although conscious of a strange hankering to stay; and during the
interval gave Mr Dalzell no further opportunity to talk about his
bronchitis--and other things. He was not aware that she was to go so
soon until she was gone; and then he found himself with livelier
feelings than had stirred his languid being for many a day. He was not
only annoyed and disappointed at being deprived of the refreshment of
her stimulating society; he was incensed with her mode of departure,
which seemed to imply an intention to evade him.

"Does she still think that I am after her money?" he asked himself,
with scorn of her mean suspiciousness. "Just because I was magnanimous
enough to ignore the past!"

He went down south, to play a little at Monte Carlo and cruise a little
in the Mediterranean--to kill time through the detestable winter, which
made itself felt wherever he was; and she went to London to see about
Francie's gown, and up north to bracing Scotland, and down to Wellwood
for Christmas, and back to the racket of London in the spring; and
neither of them had spent a lonelier time in all their lives. Quite a
fresh and peculiar sense of homelessness and uncomforted old age took
possession of them both.

All through the kaleidoscopic transformation-scenes of the "season",
through which she moved magnificently, old-maidhood notwithstanding,
she was unconsciously seeking him. It was her impression, from all she
had heard of his tastes and ways, that he could not keep away from that
common rendezvous of his class and kind. She did not find him, but all
the same he was there. He returned from his winter haunts sooner than
his wont, while still the April winds were full of menace for him,
exposed himself to those winds seeking her, caught a chill, neglected
it--a most unusual thing--and fell into an illness that confined him to
his bed for many weeks.

It was not until June that Deb heard of it. He was truly so much of an
old fogey now in the society of which he had once been such a
distinguished ornament that his disappearance was long unnoticed. And
when at last someone noticed it, in Deb's hearing, the light and
callous way in which his trouble was ref