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The young man drank his soda-water in silence, and then, leaning his elbows on the table, covered his face with his hands. There was something in his manner which told Robert Audley that his disappointment, trifling as it may appear, was in reality a very bitter one. He seated himself opposite to his friend, but did not attempt to address him.

By-and-by George looked up, and mechanically taking a greasy Times newspaper of the day before from a heap of journals on the table, stared vacantly at the first page.

I cannot tell how long he sat blankly staring at one paragraph among the list of deaths, before his dazed brain took in its full meaning; but after considerable pause he pushed the newspaper over to Robert Audley, and with a face that had changed from its dark bronze to a sickly, chalky grayish white, and with an awful calmness in his manner, he pointed with his finger to a line which ran thus:

“On the 24th inst., at Ventnor, Isle of Wight, Helen Talboys, aged 22.”

CHAPTER V

THE HEADSTONE AT VENTNOR

Yes, there it was in black and white—”Helen Talboys, aged 22.”

When George told the governess on board the Argus that if he heard any evil tidings of his wife he should drop down dead, he spoke in perfect good faith; and yet, here were the worst tidings that could come to him, and he sat rigid, white and helpless, staring stupidly at the shocked face of his friend.

The suddenness of the blow had stunned him. In this strange and bewildered state of mind he began to wonder what had happened, and why it was that one line in the Times newspaper could have so horrible an effect upon him.

Then by degrees even this vague consciousness of his misfortune faded slowly out of his mind, succeeded by a painful consciousness of external things.

The hot August sunshine, the dusty window-panes and shabby-painted blinds, a file of fly-blown play-bills fastened to the wall, the black and empty fire-places, a bald-headed old man nodding over the Morning Advertizer, the slip-shod waiter folding a tumbled table-cloth, and Robert Audley’s handsome face looking at him full of compassionate alarm—he knew that all these things took gigantic proportions, and then, one by one, melted into dark blots and swam before his eyes, He knew that there was a great noise, as of half a dozen furious steam-engines tearing and grinding in his ears, and he knew nothing more—except that somebody or something fell heavily to the ground.

He opened his eyes upon the dusky evening in a cool and shaded room, the silence only broken by the rumbling of wheels at a distance.

He looked about him wonderingly, but half indifferently. His old friend, Robert Audley, was seated by his side smoking. George was lying on a low iron bedstead opposite to an open window, in which there was a stand of flowers and two or three birds in cages.

“You don’t mind the pipe, do you, George?” his friend asked, quietly.

“No.”

He lay for some time looking at the flowers and the birds; one canary was singing a shrill hymn to the setting sun.

“Do the birds annoy you, George? Shall I take them out of the room?”

“No; I like to hear them sing.”

Robert Audley knocked the ashes out of his pipe, laid the precious meerschaum tenderly upon the mantelpiece, and going into the next room, returned presently with a cup of strong tea.

“Take this, George,” he said, as he placed the cup on a little table close to George’s pillow; “it will do your head good.”

The young man did not answer, but looked slowly round the room, and then at his friend’s grave face.

“Bob,” he said, “where are we?”

“In my chambers, dear boy, in the Temple. You have no lodgings of your own, so you may as well stay with me while you’re in town.”

George passed his hand once or twice across his forehead, and then, in a hesitating manner, said, quietly: