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“It’s splendid to meet you first day! I was going to look you up,” he said.

Sigismund Taylor and Charlie had been intimate friends at Oxford, although Charlie was, as time counts there, very considerably the junior. For the last two or three years they had hardly met.

“But what are you up for?”

“Oh, well, you see, my uncle wants me to get called to the Bar, or something, so I ran tip to have a look into it.”

“Will that take a month?”

“Look here, old fellow, I’ve got nothing else to do–I don’t see why I shouldn’t stretch it to three months. Besides, I want to spend some time with my ancestors.”

“With your ancestors?”

“In the British Museum: I’m writing a book about them. Queer lot some of them were, too. Of course I’m specially interested in Agatha Merceron; but I suppose you never heard of her.”

Mr. Taylor confessed his ignorance, and Charlie, taking his arm, walked him up and down the bank, while he talked on his pet subject. Agatha Merceron was always interesting, and just now anything about the Pool was interesting; for there was one reason for his visit to London which he had not disclosed. Nettie Wallace had, when he met her one day, incautiously dropped a word which seemed to imply that the other Agatha was often in London. Nettie tried to recall her words; but the mischief was done, and Charlie became more than ever convinced that he would grow rusty if he stayed always at Langbury Court. In fact, he could suffer it no longer, and to town he went.

For a long while Sigismund Taylor listened with no more than average interest to Charlie’s story, but it chanced that one word caught his notice.

“She comes out of the temple,” said Charlie, in the voice of hushed reverence with which he was wont to talk of the unhappy lady.

“Out of where?” asked Mr. Taylor.

“The temple. Oh, I forgot, the temple is–” and Charlie gave a description which need not be repeated.

Temple! temple! Where had he heard of a temple lately? Mr. Taylor cudgelled his brains. Why–why–yes, she had spoken of a temple. She said they met in a temple. It was a strange coincidence: the word had struck him at the time. But then everybody knows that, at a certain period, it was common enough to put up these little classical erections as a memorial or merely as an ornament to pleasure-grounds. It must be a mere coincidence. But–Mr. Taylor stopped short.

“What’s up?” asked Charlie, who had finished his narrative, and was now studying the faces of the ladies who rode past.

“Nothing,” answered Mr. Taylor.

And really it was not much–taken by itself, entirely unworthy of notice; even taken in conjunction with the temple, of no real significance, that he could see. Still, it was a whimsical thing that, as had just struck him, Charlie’s spectre should be named Agatha. But it came; to nothing: how could the name of Charlie’s spectre have anything to do with that of his penitent?

Presently Charlie, too, fell into silence. He beat his stick moodily against his leg and looked glum and absent.

“Ah, well,” he said at last, “poor Agatha was hardly used: she paid part of the debt we owe woman.”

Mr. Taylor raised his brows and smiled at this gloomily misogynistic sentiment. He had the perception to grasp in a moment what it indicated. His young friend was, or had lately been, or thought he was likely to be, a lover, and an unhappy one. But he did not press Charlie. Confessions were no luxury to him.

Presently they began to walk back, and Charlie, saying he had to dine with Victor Button, made an appointment to see Taylor again, and left him, striking across the Row. Taylor strolled on, and, finding Mrs. Marland still in her seat, sat down by her. She was surprised and pleased to hear that Charlie was in town.