‘That Janet will reward my devotion?’ ‘In due time, I daresay, such a thing may be possible,’ answered Lucius, with provoking deliberation; ‘but you had better refrain from any allusion to such hopes for some time to come.’ ‘How long now? What’s the fashionable period of mourning for a young widow whose husband was a scoundrel? Six weeks, is it? or three months? And does society demand as long a period of mourning for its scoundrels as for its most estimable men?’ ‘If it were not so near winter, Geoffrey, I should recommend you to do a few months in Norway; or, as you are so near the docks, why not take a run to Shanghai in one of those splendid China steamers—three hundred and fifty feet from stem to stern? You might by that means escape the winter; or, if you don’t care about Shanghai, you can stop at Port Said, and do a little of Egypt.’ ‘I’ve done the Pyramids and Pompey’s Pillar, and all that kind of thing,’ answered Geoffrey with a wry face. ‘Do the laws of society demand my departure?’ ‘I think it would be better for you to be away for six months or so, dear old fellow,’ answered Lucius kindly. ‘You are such an impetuous spoiled child of fortune, and I know you will be fretting and fuming, and perhaps injuring your cause with Janet by too hasty a wooing. She is a woman of deep feeling. Give her time to recover from the shock of Sivewright’s death; and be sure that I will guard your interests in the mean time. No other than Geoffrey Hossack shall ever call me brother.’ ‘It’s very good of you to say that,’ replied Geoffrey gratefully. ‘But you may be promising too much. Suppose some confoundedly agreeable fellow were to make up to your sister while I was at Shanghai, and the first thing I saw when I came back to England, in the _Times_, were the announcement of her marriage?’ ‘If that were possible, she would not be worthy of you, and you’d be better off without her,’ replied Lucius. ‘Perhaps. But I’d rather have her, even if she were capable of doing that, so long as she hadn’t done it.’ ‘There you get metaphysical, and I can barely follow you. But I’ll stake my own chances of happiness upon Janet’s constancy, even though no pledge has ever passed between you. I’ll go so far as to postpone my own marriage for the next six months, so that you may be married on the same day, if you like.’ ‘There seems something like assurance in such an offer as that,’ answered Geoffrey, ‘but I won’t fetter you. I shouldn’t like to be a stumbling-block in the way of your happiness. I’ll go straight to Shanghai. I think you’re right; I should fret and fume, and perhaps annoy Janet with my obnoxious presence if I were to remain within reach of her, walk up and down under her windows, and make myself otherwise objectionable. I’d better go to Shanghai. Yet it is hard to leave her without one word of hope from her own dear lips. You’ll let me say good-bye, Lucius?’ ‘Neither Janet nor I could very well refuse you so slight a boon.’