“If I see her, she will only suggest that I am annoying and insulting her,” Hugh thought. “I suppose I thought that I was doing a very fine and very clever thing in asking her to be my wife!” His face burned at the thought. He had meant it well; but, looking back, it struck him that he had acted like a conceited fool. He had thought to make all right, by bestowing all his possessions and his person on her, and she had put him in his place, had declined even without thanks. “And serve me jolly well right!” Hugh said. “Who?” he added aloud. “Gentleman, sir—General Bartholomew,” said the hotel page. “And who on earth is he?” “Short, stout gentleman, sir, white whiskers.” “That’s quite satisfactory then; I’ll see him,” said Hugh. He found the General in the lounge. “You’re Hugh Alston,” said the General. “I’d know you anywhere. You are your father over again. I hope that you are as good a man.” “I wish I could think so,” Hugh said, “but I can’t!” He shook hands with the General. He had a dim recollection of the old fellow, as one of his father’s friends, who in the old days, when he was a child, had come down to Hurst Dormer; but the recollection was dim. “How did you find me out here, sir?” “Ah, ha! That’s it—just a piece of luck! The name struck me—Alston—I thought of George Alston. I said to myself, ‘Can this be his boy?’ And you are, eh? George Alston, of Hurst Dormer.” The General rambled on, but he forgot to explain to Hugh how it was that he had found him out at the Northborough Hotel, and presently Hugh forgot to enquire, which was what the General wanted. “You’ll dine with me to-night, eh? I won’t take no—understand. I want to talk over old times!” “I thought of returning to Sussex to-night,” said Hugh. “Not to be thought of! I can’t let you go! I shall expect you at seven.” The old fellow seemed to be so genuinely anxious, so kindly, so friendly, that Hugh had not the heart to refuse him. “Very well, sir; it is good of you. I’ll come, I’ll put off going till to-morrow. I remember you well now, you used to come for the shooting when I was a nipper.” Not till after the old fellow had gone did Hugh wonder how he had unearthed him here in the Northborough Hotel. He had meant to ask him—he had asked him actually, and the General had not explained. But it did not matter, after all. Some coincidence, some easily understandable explanation, of course, would account for it. “And to-morrow I shall go back,” Hugh thought, as he drove to the General’s house in a taxicab. “I shall go back to Hurst Dormer, I shall get busy doing something and forget everything that I don’t want to remember.”