any more." Then as he met this adjuration with a stare from which
thought, and of the most defiant and dismal, fairly protruded, the
excellent woman put up her funny face and tenderly kissed him on the
cheek.




CHAPTER X


I have spoken of these reminiscences as of a row of coloured beads, and I
confess that as I continue to straighten out my chaplet I am rather proud
of the comparison. The beads are all there, as I said--they slip along
the string in their small smooth roundness. Geoffrey Dawling accepted as
a gentleman the event his evening paper had proclaimed; in view of which
I snatched a moment to nudge him a hint that he might offer Mrs. Meldrum
his hand. He returned me a heavy head-shake, and I judged that marriage
would henceforth strike him very much as the traffic of the street may
strike some poor incurable at the window of an hospital. Circumstances
arising at this time led to my making an absence from England, and
circumstances already existing offered him a firm basis for similar
action. He had after all the usual resource of a Briton--he could take
to his boats, always drawn up in our background. He started on a journey
round the globe, and I was left with nothing but my inference as to what
might have happened. Later observation however only confirmed my belief
that if at any time during the couple of months after Flora Saunt's
brilliant engagement he had made up, as they say, to the good lady of
Folkestone, that good lady would not have pushed him over the cliff.
Strange as she was to behold I knew of cases in which she had been