“It is horribly sad, especially when one remembers what I heard this morning, Hamilton. The girl Mr. Onslow went wild about six years ago is out in Florida this minute, and free. Duvernay, the man she married, died six months ago of malarial fever. You know Mr. Onslow was engaged to her just after he left Cambridge and went as an _attaché_, and was desperately fond of her, as I imagined he could be; and when her people forced her into marrying the other fellow, he threw up his post and wandered into all the most out-of-the-way corners of the earth to try and forget things. What makes me so interested is this: I’ve just found out that she was a Miss Mabel Kildare before she was married, and when I was a child I used to know her sister Elsie very well indeed. In fact, I believe we were some sort of cousins, and for half a year we had the same governess together, and were as intimate as two children could be. Then her sister married Mr. Duvernay, who had a colonial appointment, and Elsie went with them abroad, and we dropped completely out of touch with one another. Strange, isn’t it, that I should hear of her again the same day that brings news of poor Mr. Onslow’s death?” “It’s a small world this,” said Fairfax, sententiously, “and coincidences are the commonest things in it. I suppose in a novel the pair of them ought to have come together, and forgiven the past, and married, and settled down in a villa residence with ivy and clematis attachment, and lived happily ever afterwards. Unfortunately, real life is balder and far less romantic.” “You seem out of spirits,” said his _fiancée_, linking her fingers over his arm. “I suppose I am. To begin with, this _Port Edes_ business isn’t calculated to enliven one; and then, on the top of that, I’ve had another taste of your blessed guardian’s business methods, which has nearly sickened me out of the office altogether. You know about this ‘Brothers Steamship Company’ which he is trying to float? Well, we had a preliminary meeting to-day—quite a thousand people, and all, comparatively speaking, poor. They were, for the most part, the gang he preaches to on Sunday, with a sprinkling of skippers out of work, and other sea-faring folk who had saved a trifle of money.