Stafford was annoyed at missing Eugene, but not surprised or disturbed to hear of his visit to Territon Park. Eugene did not strike him as a possible rival. It may be doubted whether in his present frame of mind he would have looked on any man's rivalry as dangerous, but of course he was entirely ignorant of the new development of affairs, and supposed Eugene to be still the affianced husband of Miss Bernard. The only way the news affected him was by dispelling the slight hope he had entertained of finding that Claudia had already returned to London. He went back to his hotel, wrote a single line to Eugene, asking him to tell him Claudia's address, if he knew it, and then went for a walk in the Park to pass the restless hours away. It was a dull evening, and the earliest of the fogs had settled on the devoted city. A small drizzle of rain and the thickening blackness had cleared the place of saunterers, and Stafford, who prolonged his walk, apparently unconscious of his surroundings, had the dreary path by the Serpentine nearly to himself. As the fog grew denser and night fell, the spot became a desert, and its chill gloom began to be burdensome even to his prepossessed mind. He stopped and gazed as far as the mist let him over the water, which lay smooth and motionless, like a sheet of opaque glass; the opposite bank was shrouded from his view, and imagination allowed him to think himself standing on the shore of some almost boundless lake. Seen under such conditions, the Serpentine put off the cheerful vulgarity of its everyday aspect, and exercised over the spirit of the watcher the same fascination as a mountain tarn or some deep, quick-flowing stream. "Come hither and be at rest," it seemed to whisper, and Stafford, responsive to the subtle invitation, for a moment felt as if to die in the thought of his mistress would be as sweet as to live in her presence, and, it might be, less perilous. At least he could be quiet there. His mind traveled back to a by-gone incident of his parochial life, when he had found a wretched shop-boy crouching by the water's edge, and trying to screw his courage up for the final plunge. It was a sordid little tragedy--an honest lad was caught in the toils of some slatternly Jezebel; she had made him steal for her, had spent his spoil, and then deserted him for his "pal"--his own familiar friend. Adrift on the world, beggared in character and fortune, and sore to the heart, he had wandered to the edge of the water, and listened to its low-voiced promises of peace. Stafford had stretched forth his hand to pluck him from his doom and set him on his feet; he prevailed on the lad to go home in his company, and the course of a few days proved once again that despair may be no more enduring than delight. The incident had almost faded from his memory, but it revived now as he stood and looked on the water, and he recognized with a start the depths to which he was in danger of falling.