“Not more so than your silver tea-set and your exemplary Critchett are with yours. Don’t let us quarrel, at least not until to-morrow. I want to see more of old Folliott. He is one of the worst enemies I have, and I do so delight in drawing the claws of an enemy with my bland and benign manners. Besides, I owe him a good deal. The _Torch_ was in its infancy when he made its fortune and set it on its legs by his libel suits. Meet me in Hyde Park at eleven to-morrow. I’ll come out of my house through Albert Gate, and we’ll go down to his office together.” “You can go, and take my written refusal with you.” Fanshawe gives a gesture of irritated impatience, and looks at his watch. “_La nuit porte conseil._ You will think differently in the morning. I am dining at Richmond. I can’t stay another moment, but for Heaven’s sake take till to-morrow to think it over Ta-ta!” “Good-day.” Bertram looks out of the window and watches Fanshawe’s private hansom flash down Piccadilly; he vaguely wishes that he too were going to dine at Richmond, and were not fettered by principle to a cheese omelette and a vol au vent of mushrooms. It is a fine, breezy sunshiny morning on the morrow, good yachting weather, as some one says who is going down to Gravesend for the first cutter race of the season. Bertram walks along Rotten Row under the trees with a mind so preoccupied that he narrowly escapes being knocked down by an ambassadress on a bicycle. He is repeating to himself what he said to the old duke, “fais ce que dois advienne que pourra,” and he is conscious that the injunction has its thorny side like most other virtuous things. He has been unable to sleep all night for the tormenting visions evoked by Folliott’s visit and his dead cousin’s bequest. Because you valorously resist a temptation it does not any the less sharply assail you. Because you limit yourself strictly to rice croquettes you do not the less painfully recall the forbidden flavour of a salmi of game. He considers it no more possible for him in common decency to accept this property than to embrace Mahomedanism or renounce clothing; but none the less is he haunted by the possibilities that its possession would bring with it. He is human, and his heart is heavy as he walks along in the pleasant April wind. He realises that there are many charming things which he has renounced--voluntarily renounced, indeed; but, then, is it really more agreeable to kill oneself than to be killed? Anyhow, the result is the same; the grave is as deep and the sleep as eternal.