Caragh found at his rooms, when he arrived in London, in the forefront of his correspondence, a letter and a telegram.  
Both were from Lady Ethel Vernon, and had an appositeness with which their recipient could very readily have dispensed.
 
They had been propped against a photograph of the sender, a coincidence not remarkable considering the number of her likenesses which the room held.
 
These agreed in the presentment of a woman, dark and slight, with a finely carried head, deep eyes that might be passionate, and a mouth that knew something of disdain.
 
Caragh took up one of the portraits when he had read his letter, looked at it along while without expression, and set it down again. The letter, which bore a foreign postmark and was some days old, spoke to the writer's probable departure with her husband for Budapest, where the latter, who had been an under secretary, wished to study some question of religious politics which was to come before the House of Deputies.
 
It groaned at the necessity of such a sojourn at such a season, and suggested, if a hint so imperious could be called suggestion, that Maurice Caragh's presence might be required in the Hungarian capital. The telegram merely added that it was.
 
Caragh picked up an English Bradshaw, and after turning its pages absently for five minutes in search of continental routes, realized the inadequacy of the volume, took up his hat, and went out.
 
Piccadilly dozed in the September sun, with a strange air of tired quietness, inert and listless as a weary being.
 
A stale warm haze of sunlight filled the air, silent, unstirred, that made a misty thickness in the plumage of the trees, while from some by-street were blown pale vapours with the smoky reek of bitumen, which told of autumn's leisurely repairs.
 
The dust on the roadway rose about the spray of a water-cart, and beyond it rumbled a solitary bus. On the park-stand waited, driverless, a ............