wild oats in London, I believe. I hope he didn't stop him too soon. Life
coquets with dashing fellows. The coming men are always like that. We
must have him to dinner, my dear.' And we did. She grew much fonder
of Bartley than she was of me. I had been studying in Vienna, and she
thought that absurd. She was interested in the army and in politics, and
she had a great contempt for music and art and philosophy. She used to
declare that the Prince Consort had brought all that stuff over out of
Germany. She always sniffed when Bartley asked me to play for him. She
considered that a newfangled way of making a match of it."

When Alexander came in a few moments later, he found Wilson and his wife
still confronting the photograph. "Oh, let us get that out of the way,"
he said, laughing. "Winifred, Thomas can bring my trunk down. I've
decided to go over to New York to-morrow night and take a fast boat. I
shall save two days."



CHAPTER II


On the night of his arrival in London, Alexander went immediately to the
hotel on the Embankment at which he always stopped, and in the lobby he
was accosted by an old acquaintance, Maurice Mainhall, who fell upon him
with effusive cordiality and indicated a willingness to dine with him.
Bartley never dined alone if he could help it, and Mainhall was a good
gossip who always knew what had been going on in town; especially, he
knew everything that was not printed in the newspapers. The nephew of
one of the standard Victorian novelists, Mainhall bobbed about among the
various literary cliques of London and its outlying suburbs, careful to