and wish he had never been born.

He clasped his hands behind his head and looked out on the brilliant
crowd from his chair in the Café de la Cascade in the Bois. He was
handsome, this blasé young Englishman, with a shapely head, poised
strongly upon a muscular throat. Neither beard nor moustache hid the
strong lines of the face. A high type, in spite of his career, his
face was a good deal more suggestive of passion than of sensuality.
He was tall, slight, and sinewy, and carried himself with the indolent
hauteur of a man of many grandfathers. And indeed, unless, perhaps,
that this plaything, the world, was too small, he had little to
complain of. Although a younger son, he had a large fortune in his own
right, left him by an adoring grandmother who had died shortly before
he had come of age, and with whom he had lived from infancy as adopted
son and heir. This grandmother was the one woman who had ever shone
upon his horizon whose disappearance he regretted; and he was wont
to remark that he never again expected to find anything beneath
a coiffure at once so brilliant, so fascinating, so clever, so
altogether "filling" as his lamented relative. If he ever did he would
marry and settle down as a highly respectable member of society, and
become an M.P. and the owner of a winner of the Derby; but until then
he would sigh away his tired life at the feet of beauty, Bacchus, or
chance.

"What is the matter, Hal?" asked Bective Hollington, coming up behind
him. "Yawning so early in the day?"

"Bored," replied Dartmouth, briefly. "Don't expect me to talk to you.
I haven't an idea left."