And so the months had rolled on, and the “Savage” was nearly forgotten at the Club, excepting at odd times when Hetley or Dalrymple remembered how well he used to tool a team to the “Sheaves,” or row stroke in a scratch eight. My friend, if you want to find out of how little importance you are in your little world, disappear for a few months, and when you come back you will find that your place has been excellently well filled, excepting in the hearts of the one or two faithful men and women who loved you.
The world went on very well without Jack, and only two or three hearts ached, really ached, at his absence—Len, honest Len, in his den in Spider Court; Lady Bell, in Park Lane; and that other tender, loving, and tortured heart in the old new house at Hurst.
Leonard often thought of that tender heart, and sighed over it as he sighed for Jack. It was still a mystery to him, their separation; he knew that Una was still at the Hurst, but that was all. No news of her ever reached him. At times he ran across Stephen in London, and exchanged a word or a bow with him, and had noticed that he was looking better and sleeker, and less pale—more flourishing in fact, than he had done for some time.
He, too had come to Spider Court, and expressed profound grief at Jack’s disappearance, and had gone away after wringing Leonard’s hand sympathetically.
Leonard sat thinking over this far more than was good to the work he had in hand, when he heard the door open, and half starting, said absently:
“Nothing more wanted tonight, Mrs. Brown.”
But a step, certainly not Mrs. Brown’s, crossed the room, and a heavy hand was laid on his shoulder, and looking up, he saw Jack’s face above him.
“Jack!” he exclaimed, clutching him as if he expected to see him disappear again. “It is you, really you? Great Heaven!”
There was reason for the exclamation; for though it was Jack, he was so altered as to have rendered the description of him in the advertisements quite useless. Thin, pale, careworn, it was no more the old Jack than the living skeleton is Daniel Lambert.
“Great Heaven! Is it really you, Jack?”