I’ve written a short note to good old Maud and a still shorter one to the Pater. Rather rough on a man after only two days of honeymoon to have to sit down and compose all these epistles, even though it is in a tropical paradise like Mbweni—but with the thermometer at ninety something in the shade. I am sure Maud will take to Lucy; not so sure about you. You have become so grand. As to the Pater, he’ll hardly pay much attention to us unless we could consent to be buried at Silchester and excavated by him! Maud wrote some time ago to say his neglect of his Church work for excavation of Roman sites was becoming such a scandal that they’d had to engage a curate for Farleigh. And that the curate hadn’t been there two months before he had proposed to her, been refused, and then settled down to a "filial" manner. How is Silchester? It’s getting on for a year since I had a letter from you; but I saw in a recent newspaper he’d been down with influenza but was "making good progress." That always reads ominously. Look out for me sometime in May. I hope I shall be as welcome as the flowers of that same. I’m bringing you home some leopard skins and an African rattle for Clitheroe. So long! ROGER. A week after these letters were put in the Consular mail-bag, Roger had packed up and was waiting for a gun-boat to convey him across to the mainland—where he was to have an important interview with Captain Wissmann, fresh from a great victory over the Arabs. Sir Godfrey, taking leave of him, said: "Looked at the Reuters this morning?" _Roger_: "No! What’s up?" _Sir Godfrey_: "Your friend Lord Silchester is dead." "Phew!" said Roger, or as near as he could get to that conventional exclamation of surprise and speculation as to what might have been.... *CHAPTER XV* *IN ENGLAND*