letter for that name.

The waiter said it with consummate indifference, while he mechanically
dusted the little mahogany table.

George's face blanched to a deadly whiteness. "Talboys," he said;
"perhaps you didn't hear the name distinctly--T, A, L, B, O, Y, S. Go
and look again, there _must_ be a letter."

The waiter shrugged his shoulders as he left the room, and returned in
three minutes to say that there was no name at all resembling Talboys in
the letter rack. There was Brown, and Sanderson, and Pinchbeck; only
three letters altogether.

The young man drank his soda-water in silence, and then, leaning his
elbows on the table, covered his face with his hands. There was
something in his manner which told Robert Audley that his
disappointment, trifling as it may appear, was in reality a very bitter
one. He seated himself opposite to his friend, but did not attempt to
address him.

By-and-by George looked up, and mechanically taking a greasy _Times_
newspaper of the day before from a heap of journals on the table, stared
vacantly at the first page.

I cannot tell how long he sat blankly staring at one paragraph among the
list of deaths, before his dazed brain took in its full meaning; but
after considerable pause he pushed the newspaper over to Robert Audley,
and with a face that had changed from its dark bronze to a sickly,
chalky grayish white, and with an awful calmness in his manner, he