He did not laugh at the sally. He came in front of her, and stood contemplating her, with his hands behind his back. “God bless me!” he said, “one can be heroic after all in modern costume. I didn’t think it. Well, I will go, but write me a line to ensure her receiving me in the morning.” Arminell did as required. When she had finished the note and was folding it, she looked up at Welsh, and asked, “Have you read the Hecuba?” “The Hecuba? Classic? Not even in Bohn’s translation.” “Then the saying of Hecuba to Polyxenes will not occur to you: ‘I am dead before my death, through my ills.’” “I will go,” he said, and held out his hand. “Give me a shake—it will do me good.” “But, Mr. Welsh, you will return to me?” “Yes.” His mouth and eyes were twitching. “Deuce take it! an aristocrat can do an heroic thing even with a vest and toupee.” Two hours later the journalist returned. “Confound these aristocrats,” he said, as he entered, hot and puffing. “They live in daily, hourly terror of public opinion. I wouldn’t be one of them, existing in such a state of quivering terror, not for anything you could offer me. They are like a man I knew who spent all his energies in fighting against draughts. He put sandbags to the bottom of his doors, stuffed cotton-wool into the crevices of his windows, papered over the joints of his flooring, corked up the key-holes, and yet was always catching catarrh from draughts that came from—no one knows where. What they fear is breath—the breath of public opinion.” “What did my aunt say?” asked Arminell. “Say? In the most elegant and roundabout way what may be summarized in four words—‘Chuck her in again.’” “I said as much.” “Come, Miss Inglett. I have telegraphed to Tryphœna to do two extra rissoles. We shall pass the stores, and I’ll buy a tin of prawns and a bottle of Noyeau jelly. Pack up your traps. The cab is at the door. Sorry to-day is Monday, or you should have had something better than rissoles.” CHAPTER XLII. SHEPHERD’S BUSH.