Lady Lydiard pointed to the pen tray, with a smile. To show
consideration for her dog was to seize irresistibly on the high-road
to her favor. Felix set to work on his letter, in a large scrambling
handwriting, with plenty of ink and a noisy pen. "I declare we are like
clerks in an office," he remarked, in his cheery way. "All with our
noses to the paper, writing as if we lived by it! Here, Moody, let one
of the servants take this at once to Mr. Hardyman's."

The messenger was despatched. Robert returned, and waited near his
mistress, with the directed envelope in his hand. Felix sauntered back
slowly towards the picture-gallery, for the third time. In a moment more
Lady Lydiard finished her letter, and folded up the bank-note in it. She
had just taken the directed envelope from Moody, and had just placed the
letter inside it, when a scream from the inner room, in which Isabel was
nursing the sick dog, startled everybody. "My Lady! my Lady!" cried the
girl, distractedly, "Tommie is in a fit? Tommie is dying!"

Lady Lydiard dropped the unclosed envelope on the table, and ran--yes,
short as she was and fat as she was, ran--into the inner room. The two
men, left together, looked at each other.

"Moody," said Felix, in his lazily-cynical way, "do you think if you or
I were in a fit that her Ladyship would run? Bah! these are the things
that shake one's faith in human nature. I feel infernally seedy. That
cursed Channel passage--I tremble in my inmost stomach when I think of
it. Get me something, Moody."

"What shall I send you, sir?" Moody asked coldly.

"Some dry curacoa and a biscuit. And let it be brought to me in the