ner" to India. Special commissioners had begun, in
the "metropolitan press," to be the fashion, and the journal in question
felt that it had passed too long for a mere country cousin. Corvick had
no hand, I knew, for the big brush of the correspondent, but that was
his brother-in-law's affair, and the fact that a particular task was not
in his line was apt to be with himself exactly a reason for accepting
it. He was prepared to out-Herod the metropolitan press; he took solemn
precautions against priggishness, he exquisitely outraged taste. Nobody
ever knew it--the taste was all his own. In addition to his expenses he
was to be conveniently paid, and I found myself able to help him,
for the usual fat book, to a plausible arrangement with the usual fat
publisher. I naturally inferred that his obvious desire to make a little
money was not unconnected with the prospect of a union with Gwendolen
Erme. I was aware that her mother's opposition was largely addressed to
his want of means and of lucrative abilities, but it so happened that,
on my saying the last time I saw him something that bore on the question
of his separation from our young lady, he exclaimed with an emphasis
that startled me: "Ah, I'm not a bit engaged to her, you know!"

"Not overtly," I answered, "because her mother doesn't like you. But
I've always taken for granted a private understanding."

"Well, there _was_ one. But there isn't now." That was all he said,
except something about Mrs. Erme's having got on her feet again in the
most extraordinary way--a remark from which I gathered he wished me to
think he meant that private understandings were of little use when the
doctor didn't share them. What I took the liberty of really thinking
was that the girl might in some way have estranged him. Well, if he had
taken the turn of jealousy for instance it could scarcely be jealousy
of me. In that case (besides the absurdity of it) he wouldn't have gone
away to leave us together. For some time before his departure we had
indulged in no allusion to the buried treasure, and from his silence,
of which mine was the consequence, I had drawn a sharp conclusion. His
courage had dropped, his ardour had gone the way of mine--this inference
at least he left me to enjoy. More than that he couldn't do; he couldn't
face the triumph with which I might have greeted an explicit admission.
He needn't have been afraid, poor dear, for I had by this time lost all
need to triumph. In