in the rear. The grouping is oddly apposite. Occluding much of
Banghurst, and looking with a pensive, speculative expression
at Filmer, stands the Lady Mary Elkinghorn, still beautiful,
in spite of the breath of scandal and her eight-and-thirty years,
the only person whose face does not admit a perception of the camera
that was in the act of snapping them all.

So much for the exterior facts of the story, but, after all,
they are very exterior facts. About the real interest of the business
one is necessarily very much in the dark. How was Filmer feeling
at the time? How much was a certain unpleasant anticipation present
inside that very new and fashionable frock-coat? He was in the
halfpenny, penny, six-penny, and more expensive papers alike,
and acknowledged by the whole world as "the Greatest Discoverer
of This or Any Age." He had invented a practicable flying machine,
and every day down among the Surrey hills the life-sized model
was getting ready. And when it was ready, it followed as a clear
inevitable consequence of his having invented and made it--everybody
in the world, indeed, seemed to take it for granted; there wasn't
a gap anywhere in that serried front of anticipation--that he would
proudly and cheerfully get aboard it, ascend with it, and fly.

But we know now pretty clearly that simple pride and cheerfulness
in such an act were singularly out of harmony with Filmer's private
constitution. It occurred to no one at the time, but there the fact is.
We can guess with some confidence now that it must have been
drifting about in his mind a great deal during the day, and, from
a little note to his physician complaining of persistent insomnia,
we have the soundest reason for supposing it dominated his nights,
--the idea that it would be after all, in spite of his theoretical