Of Patricia he knew absolutely nothing; not even the echo of her name reached him. That most energetic of society chronicles, Town Optics, was never counted in his literature, though, had he known it, even that authority was silent concerning her movements. She had apparently dropped out of his life as completely as even he could desire; and, as he acknowledged with a bitter smile, she was not likely to vex or trouble him more, in the changed conditions of his future.
Ah, well, let her rest in peace! Patty, his wilful, loving, perverse little Patty, had been dead to him for ten long years.
But with the last week of July, Mr. Tremain aroused himself, and, throwing off his lethargy, hastily packed a light portmanteau and betook himself to a certain landing-stage down in the city's depths; and as the sun set in a harmony of gorgeous splendour over Bowling Green and Castle Garden, making a golden symbol of Trinity's tall spire, and flooding the city with transient beauty, he stood upon the deck of a small steamer, bound for the rocky shores of Maine, and, two days later, had vanished amidst the deep far-stretching pine forests of that eastern state, pitching his tent beside an outlet of wild Hemlock Lake, and lost completely to civilisation in the form of post, or telegraph, or daily paper.
CHAPTER XII.
PLOTTING.
Count Mellikoff had also on leaving the Folly betaken himself to New York, and re-established his locale in that quiet but eminently aristocratic hotel, which has for years been a sort of Mecca to European wanderers, who finding life on the plan of the ordinary huge American caravansary, too public and en évidence, have sought with thankfulness the more retired existence of this favoured resort.
Most people object to that process of public cleansing usually regarded as the attribute of vulgarity; but one need not be vulgar to object to consuming one's roast beef and port wine under the public eye. It is not a pleasant sensation to come to look upon one's self as only an atom in the great scheme of a table d'hôte; one loses one's identity at such times, and with the loss of identity goes also one's self-respect. If you wish to retain your dignity in your own eyes and in the eyes of your world, keep yourself to yourself; and, above all, do your eating and drinking in private. Nothing is so much desired as that which is difficult of attainment; and no man has so many dinner invitations as he who is known to be fastidious, as to whose table he will honour with his presence.
On the evening of the same day as that on which Mr. Tremain started off on his lonely wanderings, Count Mellikoff sat in a private apartment of his hotel busy over a variety of despatches and papers, heaped together on a writing-table.
The day had been very warm, and even with the approach of night the atmosphere became but little less intolerable. The windows were open, but the latticed blinds were let down, and through the crevices the moonlight fell in broken lines across the walls, the rays of the small lamp on the writing-table being too faint to outshine the moonbeams; the room, in consequence, had a half unreal appearance, through the mingled reflections of oil and moonlight.