"Who did not dare absent himself, and hopes for more inspiration like that which took him out of the ring and made him a great man. Vandervelt."
"Well, he, of course, is purely disinterested."
"Didn't she inform him of her triumph over Livingstone in London? And isn't he to be the next ambassador, and more power to him?"
"And John Everard of course."
"To greet his daughter, and to prevent your humble servant from kissing the same," and he sighed with pleasure and triumph. "Where is she? Shall I have long to wait? Is she changed?"
"Ask her brother," with a nod for the upper berth where Louis slept serenely.
"And of course you have news?"
"Loads of it. I have arranged for a breakfast and a talk after the arrival is finished. There'll be more to eat than the steak."
The steamer swung to the pier some hours later, and Arthur walked ashore to the music of a band which played decorously the popular strains for a popular hero returning crowned with glory. His mother arrived as became the late guest of the Irish nobility. Grahame handed Mona into her father's arms with an exasperating gesture, and then plunged into his note-book, as if he did not care. The surprised passengers wondered what hidden greatness had traveled with them across the sea. On the deck Sonia watched the scene with dull interest, for some one had murmured something about a notorious Fenian getting back home to his kind. Arthur saw her get into a cab with her party a few minutes later and drive away. A sadness fell upon him, the bitterness which follows the fading of our human dreams before the strong light of day.