"Shall I like a hermit dwell
On a rock, or in a cell,
Calling home the smallest part
That is missing of my heart,
To bestow it where I may
Meet a rival every day?
If she undervalues me,
What care I how fair she be?"
CHAPTER XVII.
THE WIDOW OF A MINISTER OF FINANCE.
"You are just in time, Arbuthnot, to do me a service," said Dalrymple, looking up from his desk as I went in, and reaching out his hand to me over a barricade of books and papers.
"Then I am very glad I have come," I replied. "But what confusion is this? Are you going anywhere?"
"Yes--to perdition. There, kick that rubbish out of your way and sit down."
Never very orderly, Dalrymple's rooms were this time in as terrible a litter as can well be conceived. The table was piled high with bills, old letters, books, cigars, gloves, card-cases, and pamphlets. The carpet was strewn with portmanteaus, hat-cases, travelling-straps, old luggage labels, railway wrappers, and the like. The chairs and sofas were laden with wearing apparel. As for Dalrymple himself, he looked haggard and weary, as though the last four weeks had laid four years upon his shoulders.
"You look ill," I said clearing a corner of the sofa for my own accommodation; "or ennuyé, which is much the same thing. What is the matter? And what can I do for you?"
"The matter is that I am going abroad," said he, with his chin resting moodily in his two palms and his elbows on the table.