oundrel!"

"Don't let's say any more about him--he's dead!" and Philip quickened
his steps. "And what a horrible death!"

"Horrible enough, indeed!"

Again they were both silent. Mechanically they turned down towards Pall
Mall.

"George," said Errington, with a strange awe in his tones, "it seems to
me to-day as if there were death in the air. I don't believe in
presentiments, but yet--yet I can-not help thinking--what if I should
find my Thelma--_dead_?"

Lorimer turned very pale--a cold shiver ran through him, but he
endeavored to smile.

"For God's sake, old fellow, don't think of anything so terrible! Look
here, you're hipped--no wonder! and you've got a long journey before
you. Come and have lunch. It's just two o'clock. Afterwards we'll go to
the Garrick and have a chat with Beau Lovelace--he's a first-rate fellow
for looking on the bright side of everything. Then I'll see you off this
afternoon at the Midland--what do you say?"

Errington assented to this arrangement, and tried to shake off the
depression that had settled upon him, though dark forebodings passed one
after the other like clouds across his mind. He seemed to see the
Altenguard hills stretching drearily, white with frozen snow, around the
black Fjord; he pictured Thelma, broken-hearted, fancying herself
deserted, returning through the cold and darkness to the lonely
farm-house behind the now withered pines. Then he began to think of the
shell-cave where that other Thelma lay hidden in her last deep
sleep,--the wailing words of Sigurd came freshly back to his ears, when
the poor crazed lad had likened Thelma's thoughts to his favorite
flowers, the pansies--"One by one you will gather and play with her
thoughts as though they were these blossoms; your burning hand will mar
their color--they will wither and furl up and die,--and you--what will
you care? Nothing! No man ever cares for a flower that is withered,--not
even though his own hand slew it!"

Had he been to blame? he mused, with a sorrowful weight at his heart.
Unintentionally, had he,--yes, he would put it plainly,--had he
neglected her, just a little? Had he not, with all his true and
passionate love for her, taken her beauty, her devotion, her obedience
too much for granted--too much as his right? And in these latter months,
when her health had made her weaker and more in need of his tenderness,
had he not, in a sudden desire for political fame and worldly honor,
left her too much