“Africa? That does not sound interesting.”
“It is interesting: moreover, it is the coming country. I may be able to make money out there, and money is a necessity at present.”
“I do not like it, Jack,” she said in a foreboding voice. “When do you go?”
“At once—in fact, I came to say good-bye. It is better to do these things very promptly—to disappear before the onlookers have quite understood what is happening. When they begin to understand they begin to interfere. They cannot help it. I will write to Lady Cantourne if you like.”
“No, I will tell her.”
So he bade her good-bye, and those things that lovers say were duly said; but they are not for us to chronicle. Such words are better left to be remembered or forgotten as time and circumstance and result may decree. For one may never tell what words will do when they are laid within the years like the little morsel of leaven that leaveneth the whole.
CHAPTER IV. A TRAGEDY
Who knows? the man is proven by the hour.
In his stately bedroom on the second floor of the quietest house in Russell Square Mr. Thomas Oscard—the eccentric Oscard—lay, perhaps, a-dying.