"It is an awfully provoking step for Winny to have taken," said Gerald, as his servant disappeared with the breakfast tray. "She has no doubt been grumbling to you and Mrs. Channing about her 'wrongs,'--it's what she called it yesterday--but I know mine are worse. Fancy her taking such a mad start! What on earth I am to do with them in town, I can't guess. You've not got her outside, I suppose? You know, Hamish, I couldn't help myself; I had to leave her." "Qui s'excuse s'accuse," returned Hamish, with one of his sunny smiles chancing on the very common French proverb that Mr. Bede Greatorex had applied but recently to Gerald's brother. "Oh bother," said Gerald. "Did Winny strike last night, and refuse to go into lodgings?" "She went all right enough but she didn't like your leaving her to go in alone. My wife seized hold of the occasion to read me a lecture, saying _she_ should not like it at all; I'm not sure but she said 'not put up with it.'" "Your wife is a different woman from mine," growled Gerald; for Hamish's gay, half mocking tone covering a kinder and deeper feeling, jarred somewhat on his perplexed mind. "You knew what Winny is before today. I shall go down and see her by-and-by." "Shall you keep these chambers on?" "Keep these chambers on!" echoed Gerald, "why, of _course_ I must keep them on. And live at them too, in a general way. Though how I shall afford the cost of the two places, the devil only knows." "You have been affording it hitherto. Winny has had a separate home." "What keeps a cottage down yonder, won't pay lodgings in London. You must know that, Hamish." Hamish did not immediately speak: if he could not agree, he would not disagree. He did not see why Gerald should not take either a small house, or apartments sufficiently commodious, in a neighbourhood good enough for his fashionable friends not to be ashamed to resort to. Hamish and Gerald understood things in so different a light: Gerald estimated people (and fashion) by their drawl, and dress, and assumption of fast life: Hamish knew that all good men, no matter though they were of the very highest rank, were proud to respect worth and intellect and sincere nature in a poor little home, as in a palace perched aloft on Hyde Park gates. Ah me! I think one must be coming near to quit this world and its frivolity, ere the curtain of dazzling gauze that falls before our eyes is lifted. "Are you getting on with my manuscript, Hamish?" "I have brought it," said Hamish, taking it from his pocket. "I put away my own work----" "Oh, thank you old fellow," was the quick interruption. "Now don't thank me for nothing, Gerald. I was about to say that one can judge so much better of a book in reading it without breaks given to other work, that I stretched a point; for my own pleasure, you know."