When the _coupé_ appeared and he took his place at Richard's side, he bent forward to bestow on Tredennis, as they drove away, a glance expressive of but little favor. "I don't like that fellow," he said. "Confound him!" Richard settled himself in his corner of the carriage, folding his fur-trimmed coat about him quite luxuriously. "Oh, no. Not confound him," he replied. "He is a delightful fellow--in his way." "Confound his way, then," responded Planefield. "There's too much of it." Richard leaned slightly forward to look at the tall, motionless figure himself, and the faintest possible change passed over his face as he did so. "He is not exactly a malleable sort of fellow," he remarked, "and I suppose there might arise occasions when he would be a little in the way; but there is no denying that he is picturesque." "Oh!" exclaimed his companion, with more fervor than grace. "The devil take his picturesqueness!" In the meantime Colonel Tredennis awaited the arrival of his own carriage, which had fallen back in the line. The surging of the crowd about him, the shouts of the policemen as they called up the vehicles, the rolling of vehicles and opening and shutting of doors, united themselves in an uproar which seemed to afford him a kind of seclusion. The subject of his thoughts as he stood in the midst of the throng was not a new one; it was one from whose presence he had ceased to expect to free himself; but as the information in the morning paper had accelerated the pulse of emotion in him, so his brief interview with Richard Amory had quickened it again. Since the day when he had left her in Virginia, five months before, he had not seen Bertha at all, and had only heard from her directly once. She had been at Long Branch, Saratoga, Newport, and afterward visiting friends in the northern cities. After his return from the West, Richard had frequently been with her, and their letters to the professor had informed him that they were well and were involved in a round of gayeties.