"Just as you wish, of course," she answered coldly, with a slight haughty inclination of her head. "And now, Lord Annerley," I heard her add, in a very altered tone, "I hear that you have a new team. Do tell me all about them. Are they greys or mixed?" I walked away, nor did I enter the Park again whilst I was in London. CHAPTER XXX LIAR AND COWARD "It's the book of the day." "It's decidedly the cleverest thing of its sort I ever read." "Have you read the review in the _Athenæum_?" "And in the _Saturday Review_." "They all praise it, even the _Spectator_." "Who's the author? Whose initials are R. D.?" "Why, don't you know? It's Major Rupert Devereux, the man who wrote that awfully clever article in the _Fortnightly_ last month. He's an M.P., and a great man on committees. Sort of practical philanthropist." I was standing in front of a bookshop leading out of the Strand amongst a little group of other passers-by, who had halted for a moment to turn over the volumes which were out on view, and this was the conversation which I heard being carried on almost at my elbow. I listened eagerly for more, but the speakers had passed on. My Uncle Rupert was a great man, then, I thought, bitterly. Curse him! I was scarcely surprised, for there was in his pale face all the nervous force of imaginative intellect. What was it he had written? I wondered. I took up the _Times_, and glanced through its columns. Ah, there it was--a review two columns long--"Richard Strathdale, novelist," by R.D. I glanced through the review; it was one long eulogy. A profound metaphysical romance! The most brilliant work of fiction of the age, and so on, and so on. I stopped at a bookseller's, and asked for "Richard Strathdale." They were sold out. I tried another with the same result--there had been a tremendous run on it, they told me. But at last, at a railway bookstall, I was just in time to purchase their last copy, and hurried back with it to my hotel. I commenced to read, and I read on deeply interested. There was much that I could not understand, much that betrayed an intimate knowledge with schools of philosophic thought the names of which even were unknown to me. But there was a great deal which, despite my prejudice against the writer, seemed to me almost sublime. It was written from a noble, almost an idyllic standpoint. There were no carping pessimisms in it, no Nineteenth Century disputativeness. It seemed to be the work of a man who believed in all that was pure and lofty in nature and in human nature. The spirit of a good, high-minded man seemed to be breathing through it in every line. I laid it down when I was half-way through with a startled little gasp. Could this be my Uncle Rupert! this the man whose life was a living lie? Never had my faith in my father wavered for one moment, but just then everything seemed chaos. I read on until I came to a passage where the hero of the story was speaking of another man: