Nor golden largesse of thy praise.




RED POTTAGE




CHAPTER I

In tragic life, God wot,
No villain need be! Passions spin the plot:
We are betray'd by what is false within.
--GEORGE MEREDITH.


"I can't get out," said Sterne's starling, looking through the bars of
his cage.

"I will get out," said Hugh Scarlett to himself, seeing no bars, but
half conscious of a cage. "I will get out," he repeated, as his hansom
took him swiftly from the house in Portman Square, where he had been
dining, towards that other house in Carlton House Terrace, whither his
thoughts had travelled on before him, out-distancing the
_trip-clip-clop, trip-clip-clop_ of the horse.

It was a hot night in June. Hugh had thrown back his overcoat, and the
throng of passers-by in the street could see, if they cared to see, "the