"Oh! I'll manage all right. I have an A1 prescription for the febrile part of the disease--I--I should like to give it to you----"
The red brown eyes looked into the blue ones. "Yes!" replied Ned coolly, "she has married the other fellow because, no doubt, love seemed to her to be the devil. You are about right, Ramsay. Women are impayable in that connection. Good-bye."
He tried to amuse himself in a thousand ways that afternoon, but they all failed, so he took to business the next day, and went back to New Park in the evening and drank another bottle of champagne and smoked still more cigarettes.
The next day brought him a letter in an unknown hand. Was it a man's or a woman's, he wondered. A woman's surely, since the black-edged envelope smelt horribly of scent as he opened it.
Aura Cruttenden! The signature gave him quite a shock. The idea of her using either black-edged paper or scent revolted him, but the letter was--passable.
"Dear Ned," it ran, "I suppose I ought to call you Lord Blackborough, but I can't. I shall never forget you. You have taught me, I think, everything I know that's worth knowing. Perhaps ever so long age you and I were the same Amœba. What are we going to be in the end. That is the question. Don't--don't quarrel with us, please.--Yours,
"Aura Cruttenden."
"Don't quarrel!" That was all very well; but what else was there to do? It was impossible for him to go on drinking champagne and smoking cigarettes till he died.
Finally, he tried London and a round of the theatres and music-halls. He amused himself immensely and was never for one instant content. He played bridge at the club, and went no trumps until a choleric old gentleman remarked that it was no wonder he had such a dislike to the Day of Judgment. Whereupon he laughed and played no more. Then he sought out Mr. Hirsch, and went gold-bugging in the city, but after dining en petit comité with many Jews, Turks, Infidels and Heretics at every smart set restaurant in London, at every one of which Mr. Hirsch called the waiters by their names as if they were his own servants, he gave it up in sheer disgust, and tried to feel an interest in the Grand National, even to the extent of allowing himself to bet freely with his friends. He did everything in fact that a man can do to please himself, short of buying cheap or dear kisses; and even that he might have done, being for the time quite reckless, but for the fact he was soul-weary of womanhood, her ways and works. Finally he went back to Blackborough and felt the first really keen and natural emotion of which he had been capable for a month, when he met Ted Cruttenden by chance in the street.
"I hope your wife is quite well," he said sedately, feeling then and there a desire to throttle his successful rival. It was a most wholesome feeling, he recognised, for it sent the blood coursing through his veins once more in honest antagonism to something of which he disapproved. Ted seemed to feel this antagonism pierce through him, decorously dressed in a black business suit though he was, for he said hurriedly--"Oh! all right. Won't you come into the office for a moment. I--I should like to speak to you."