Up in Highgate an hour later you might have seen a hansom driving about, pausing here and there to ask of policemen, pedestrians, and others for "The Laurels."

[Pg 49]

"There's a' many Laurels," said the milkman, who was also the first director, and so after awhile Mr Bevan found to his cost.

But at last they found, with the aid of a local directory, the right one, a spacious house built of red brick seen through an avenue of lime trees all abuzz with bees.

There was no sign of life in the little gate lodge, and the entrance gate was pushed back; the orderly eye of Charles Bevan noticed that it was half off its hinges; also, that the weeds in the avenue were rampant.

A laburnum had pushed its way through the limes, and a peony, as large almost as a cabbage, had laid its head on the avenue-way, presenting a walk-over-me-I-don't-care appearance, quite in accordance with the general aspect of things.

The hansom drew up at the door and the traveller from Southampton Row flung away his cigar end, alighted, and ran up the three steps leading to the porch. He rang the bell, and then stood wondering at the luxuriance of the wisteria that overspread the porch, and contemplating the hind hocks of the cab-horse which had been fired.

What he was about to do or say when he[Pg 50] found himself in the presence of his enemy was not very clear to the mind of Mr Bevan. What did occur to him was that George Lambert would have the advantage over him in the interview, seeing that he would be in his own house—on his own dunghill, so to speak.

He might have got into the hansom and returned to town, but that would have been an admission to himself that he had committed a fault, and to admit themselves in fault, even to themselves, was never a way with the Bevans.

So he rang and waited, and rang again.

Presently shuffling footsteps sounded from behind the door which opened some two inches, disclosing a pale, blue eye, part of a nose, and an uncertain coloured fringe.

"What do you want?" cried a voice through the crack.

"Does Mr George Lambert live here?"

"He does, but he's from home."

"Dear me," murmured Charles, whose curiosity was now greatly aroused by the neglected aspect of the place and the mysterious personage hidden by the door. He felt a great desire to penetrate further into the affairs of his enemy and see what was to be seen.

[Pg 51]

"Is Miss Lambert in?"

"Yus."

"Then give her my card, please. I would like to speak to her."

The person behind the door undid the chain, satisfied evidently by Bevan's voice and appearance that he was not a dun or a robber. The door opened disclosing a servant maid, very young and very dirty.

This ash-cat took the piece of pasteboard, and made a pretence of reading it, invited Charles to enter, and then closing the door, and barring it this time as if to keep him in, should he try to escape, led the way across a rather empty hall to a library.

Here she invited him to sit down upon a chair, having first dusted it with her apron, and declaring that she would send Miss Fanny to him in "a minit," vanished, and left him to his meditations.

"Most extraordinary place," said Charles, glancing round at the books in their cases. "Most extraordinary place I ever entered."

As he looked about him, he heard the youthful servant's voice raised now to its highest pitch, and calling "Miss Fanny, Miss[Pg 52] Fanny, Miss F-a-a-anny" and dying away as if in back passages.

The library was evidently much inhabited by the Lamberts; it was pleasantly perfumed with tobacco, and in the grate lay the expiring embers of a morning fire. The Lamberts were evidently not of the order of people who extinguish their fires on the first of May. There were whips and fishing-rods, and a gun or two here and there, and books everywhere about, besides those on the shelves. The morning paper lay spread open on the floor, where it had been cast by the last reader, and on the floor lay other things, which in most houses are to be found on tables, envelopes crumpled up, letters, and other trifles.

On a little table by the window grew an orange-tree in a flower-pot, bearing oranges as large as marrow-fat peas; through the half-open window came wasps in and out, the perfume of mignonette and the murmur of distant bees.

He came to the window and looked out.

Outside lay the ruins of a garden bathed in the golden light of summer, the light that
"Speaks wide and loud
From deeps blown clean of cloud,
As though day's heart were proud
And heaven's were glad."

[Pg 53]

Beyond lay a paddock in whose centre lay the wraith of a tennis lawn; the net hung shrivelled between the tottering poles, and close to the net he saw the forlorn figure of a girl playing what seemed a fantastic game of tennis all alone.

She would hit the ball into the air and strike it back when it fell; if it went over the net she would jump after it.

Now appeared the slattern maid, card between finger and thumb, picking her way like a cat along the tangled garden path in the direction of the girl.

Mr Bevan turned away from the window and looked at the books lining the wall, his eye travelling from Humboldt's works to the tooled back of Milton—he was trying to recollect who Schopenhauer was—when of a sudden the door opened and an amazingly pretty girl of the old-fashioned school of beauty entered the room. She was dark, and she came into the room laughing, yet with a half-frightened air as if fearful of being caught missing from some old canvas.

"You won't tell," said she as they shook hands like intimate acquaintances. "If father knew I had asked Mr Hancock, you know[Pg 54] what, he'd kill me; I really believe he would." She put down her tennis racquet on the table, her hat she had left outside, and evidently in a hurry, to judge by the delightful disorder of her hair.

Mr Bevan, who was trying to stiffen his lip and appear very formal, had taken his seat on a low chair which made him feel dwarfed and ridiculous. He had also, unfortunately, left his hat on the table some yards away, and so had nothing with which to occupy his hands; he was, therefore, entirely at the mercy of Miss Lambert, who had taken an armchair near by, and was now chattering to him with the familiarity, almost, of a sister.

"It seems so fortunate, you know," said she suddenly, discarding a discussion about the weather. "It seems so fortunate that idea of mine of speaking to Mr Hancock. I hate fighting with people, but father loves it; he'd fight with himself, I think, if he could find no one else, and still, if you knew him, he's the sweetest-tempered person in the world, he is, he would do anything for anybody, he would lay his life down for a friend. But you will know him now, now that that terrible affair about the fish stream is settled."

[Pg 55]

Mr Bevan swallowed rapidly and cast frantic glances at his hat. Had Miss Lambert been of the ordinary type of girl he might possibly have intimated that the fish stream business was not so settled as she supposed, but with this sweet-tongued and friendly beauty, it was impossible. He felt deeply exasperated at the false position in which he found himself, and was endeavouring to prepare some reply of a non-committal character when, of a sudden, his eye caught a direful sight, which for a moment made him forget both fish stream and fal............