Then--shot into his head by some unseen and unaccountable machinery--there darted across his mind a fragment of a conversation he had overheard, at entering his parlor, the day before the Bensons left. Philip and Lucy were standing before a miniature painting of Sarah and her child, completed and brought home a short time previous. Although seemingly intent upon the picture, their conversation must have strayed far from the starting-point, for the first sentence that reached the unintentional listener was a tart, scornful speech from Lucy, that could by no stretch of the imagination be made to apply to her sister. "If you admire her so much, why did you not marry her when you had the opportunity? She was willing enough!" "Take care you do not make me regret that I did not do so!" was Philip's stern rejoinder as he turned from her. The change of position showed him that Lewis was present, and for a second his inimitable self-possession wavered. Recovering himself, he reverted to the picture, and called upon his host to decide some disputed point in its artistic execution which he and Lucy were discussing. "Poor fellow! he has learned that all is not gold that glitters!" mused Lewis to the newspaper he was pretending to read. "Lucy had a high reputation for amiability before she was Mrs. Benson. There is no touchstone like the wedding ring to bring out one's true qualities." He sat with his back to the entrance of the saloon, and the table directly behind him was now taken possession of by three or four new arrivals--all gentlemen, and apparently on familiar terms with one another. They called for a bountiful lunch, including wine, and plunged into a lively, rather noisy talk. Lewis closed his ears, and applied himself in earnest to his paper. He started presently at a word he could have declared was his name. Restraining the impulse to look around and see who of the group was known to him, he yet could not help trying to determine this point by their voices. One, a thin falsetto, he fancied belonged to George Bond, who was no more of a favorite with him than was his better half with Sarah. Lewis regarded him as a conceited rattlepate, whose sole talent lay in the art of making money--whose glory was his purse. "Why should he be talking about me here? Nonsense; I was mistaken!" and another page of the newspaper was turned. "When I leave my wife at Newport, or anywhere else, in the particular and brotherly care of one of her former flames, publish me as a crazy fool!" said the wiry voice again, almost in the reader's ear. "He doesn't know old stories as well as you do, perhaps," remarked some one. "I should think not! When my wife pulls the wool over my eyes in that style, horsewhip me around town, and I won't cry 'Quarter!' Sister's husband or not, I'll be hanged if I would have him in my house for two weeks, and he is such a good-looking dog, too!"