CHAPTER IV. A TRAGEDY



Who knows? the man is proven by the hour.

In his stately bedroom on the second floor of the quietest house in
Russell Square Mr. Thomas Oscard--the eccentric Oscard--lay,
perhaps, a-dying.

Thomas Oscard had written the finest history of an extinct people
that had ever been penned; and it has been decreed that he who
writes a fine history or paints a fine picture can hardly be too
eccentric. Our business, however, does not lie in the life of this
historian--a life which certain grave wiseacres from the West End
had shaken their heads over a few hours before we find him lying
prone on a four-poster counting for the thousandth time the number
of tassels fringing the roof of it. In bold contradiction to the
medical opinion, the nurse was, however, hopeful. Whether this
comforting condition of mind arose from long experience of the ways
of doctors, or from an acquired philosophy, it is not our place to
inquire. But that her opinion was sincere is not to be doubted.
She had, as a matter of fact, gone to the pantomime, leaving the
patient under the immediate eye of his son, Guy Oscard.

The temporary nurse was sitting in a cretonne-covered armchair, with
a book of travel on his knee, and thoughts of Millicent Chyne in his