that he was prepared to
drink anything. He longed to inform Irene of the taste in his mouth--she
was so sympathetic--but it would not be a distinguished thing to do; he
rolled his tongue round, and faintly smacked it against his palate.

In a far corner of the tent Adolf was bending his cat-like moustaches
over a kettle. He left it at once to draw the cork of a pint-bottle of
champagne. Swithin smiled, and, nodding at Bosinney, said: "Why, you're
quite a Monte Cristo!" This celebrated novel--one of the half-dozen he
had read--had produced an extraordinary impression on his mind.

Taking his glass from the table, he held it away from him to scrutinize
the colour; thirsty as he was, it was not likely that he was going to
drink trash! Then, placing it to his lips, he took a sip.

"A very nice wine," he said at last, passing it before his nose; "not
the equal of my Heidsieck!"

It was at this moment that the idea came to him which he afterwards
imparted at Timothy's in this nutshell: "I shouldn't wonder a bit if
that architect chap were sweet upon Mrs. Soames!"

And from this moment his pale, round eyes never ceased to bulge with the
interest of his discovery.

"The fellow," he said to Mrs. Septimus, "follows her about with his
eyes like a dog--the bumpy beggar! I don't wonder at it--she's a very
charming woman, and, I should say, the pink of discretion!" A vague
consciousness of perfume caging about Irene, like that from a flower
with half-closed petals and a passionate heart, moved him to the
creation of this image. "But I wasn't sure of it," he said, "till I saw
him pick up her handkerchief."

Mrs. Small's eyes boiled with excitement.

"And did he give it her back?" she asked.

"Give it back?" said Swithin: "I saw him slobber on it when he thought I
wasn't looking!"

Mrs. Small gasped--too interested to speak.

"But she gave him no encouragement," went on Swithin; he stopped, and
stared for a minute or two in the way that alarmed Aunt Hester so--he
had suddenly recollected that, as they were starting back in the
phaeton, she had given Bosinney her hand a second time, and let it stay
there too.... He had touched his horses smartly with the whip, anxious
to get her all to himself. But she had looked back, and she had not
answered his first question; neither had he been able to see her
face--she had kept it hanging down.

There is somewhere a picture, which Swithin has not seen, of a man
sitting on a rock, a