A week later, when I returned to London, Ireton was still living at the
little inn, and a letter I received from him at the beginning of October
told me he had just left. 'The country was exquisite that last week,' he
wrote;--and it struck me that 'exquisite' was a word he must have caught
from some one else's lips.

I heard from him again in the following January. He wrote from the Isle of
Wight, and informed me that in the spring he was to be married to Miss
Ethel Armitage, second daughter of Humphrey Armitage, Esq., of Brackley
Hall.




CHRISTOPHERSON


It was twenty years ago, and on an evening in May. All day long there had
been sunshine. Owing, doubtless, to the incident I am about to relate, the
light and warmth of that long-vanished day live with me still; I can see
the great white clouds that moved across the strip of sky before my window,
and feel again the spring languor which troubled my solitary work in the
heart of London.

Only at sunset did I leave the house. There was an unwonted sweetness in
the air; the long vistas of newly lit lamps made a golden glow under the
dusking flush of the sky. With no purpose but to rest and breathe, I
wandered for half an hour, and found myself at length where Great Portland
Street opens into Marylebone Road. Over the way, in the shadow of Trinity