She talked to him about Lady Emily and the farm. Had he been shooting? Were there many birds this year? She talked of the most frivolous things in order to ward off painful subjects. But he himself spoke of Suzette. "She has gone away, I am told, for the whole winter. Marsh House is shut up. I never knew what a bright, home-like house it was till I saw it this morning, with the shutters shut, and the gates padlocked. There was not even a dog to bark at me. She has gone far afield; but I am going a good deal farther." And then he told her with a certain excitement of his meeting with Cecil Patrington, and his approaching departure for Zanzibar. "It was the luckiest thing in the world for me," he said. "I had not the least idea what to do with myself, or where to go, to get out of myself. The little I have seen of the Continent rather bored me--picture-gallery, cathedral, town-hall, a theatre, invariably shut up, a river, reported delightful when navigable, but not navigable at the time being. The same thing, and the same thing--not very interesting to a man who can't reckon the age of a cathedral to within a century or two--over and over again. But this will be new, this will mean excitement. I shall feel as if I were born again. The wonder will be--to myself, at least--that I don't come home black." "And you think you will find consolation--in Africa?" "I hope to find forgetfulness." "Poor Allan! Poor Geoffrey! It is a hard thing that you should both suffer." "Mr. Wornock's sufferings will soon be over, I take it. Rapture and not suffering will be the dominant in the scale of his life. He will have everything his own way when I am gone." "I don't think he will. He has not confided his secrets to me, but I believe he has offered himself to her, since her engagement was broken, and has been rejected." "He will offer himself again and will be accepted. There are conventionalities to be observed. Miss Vincent would not like people to say that she transferred her affections from lover to lover with hardly a week's interval." "I only know that my son is very unhappy, Allan." "So is a spoilt child when he can't have the moon. Your son will get the moon all in good time--only he will have to wait for it, and spoilt children don't like waiting." "How bitterly you speak of him, Allan. I hope you are not going to be ill friends." "Why should we be ill friends? It is not his fault that she has thrown me over--at the eleventh hour. It is only his good fortune to be more attractive than I am. It was the contrast with his brilliancy that showed her my dulness. He has the magnetism which I have not--genius, perhaps, or at least the air and suggestion of genius. One hardly knows what constitutes the real thing. I am one of the crowd. He has the marked individuality which fascinates or repels."