When Lady Wantley had left him, and after the house had settled down again into its usual summer stillness and silence, Mr. Gumberg, acting on a sudden impulse, did that which he lived to regret--though only, it must be admitted, when in a cynical mood--to the end of his life. Slowly he made his way to the mahogany cupboard where he kept some of his choicest treasures, including the rarer of his unframed prints. From there he extracted a small portfolio, and returning to his armchair, he propped it up on the sloping desk at his elbow. For a few moments his fingers fumbled with the green silk strings, and he turned over the contents with eager hands. 'The Lady and her Pack.' Mr. Gumberg peered musingly at the curious rudely-coloured design. He wondered half suspiciously whether it was only his fancy that detected a certain similarity between the horsewoman, sitting so squarely and so gallantly on her huge roan, and the lady who had just left him. Both figures--that of Rosina Bellamont and that of Lady Wantley--had about them a certain dauntlessness, a look of high courage. Mr. Gumberg hastily turned the little print about. He took up a magnifying-glass, and carefully read through the notes with which the reverse side was covered, and which, in addition to names and dates, gave a number of more intimate particulars concerning the various human-faced hounds composing the pack. Then, with a certain deliberateness, he lighted the little red taper with the help of which he always sealed his letters, and, holding what had been the most valued of his minor treasures over the flame, Mr. Gumberg watched it vanish into the flickering air above the taper. But during the rest of that afternoon and evening his eyes often turned towards the little tear-bottle, brought to him by a friend from Rome, where he had carefully placed the pinch of brown ash which was all that now remained of 'The Lady and her Pack.' CHAPTER XV 'Ah, dear, but come them back to me! Whatever change the days have wrought, I find not yet one lonely thought That cries against my wish for thee.' I