promise between the formality of 'Doctor Forester' and the intimacy—to which Eric Lindon hardly seemed entitled—of 'Arthur') "has gone abroad by this time, I suppose? Can you give me his present address?"
"He is still at Elveston—I believe," was the reply. "But I have not been there since I last met you."
I did not know which part of this intelligence to wonder at most. "And might I ask—if it isn't taking too much of a liberty—when your wedding-bells are to—or perhaps they have rung, already?"
"No," said Eric, in a steady voice, which betrayed scarcely a trace of emotion: "that engagement is at an end. I am still 'Benedick the unmarried man,'"
After this, the thick-coming fancies—all radiant with new possibilities of happiness for Arthur—were far too bewildering to admit of any further conversation, and I was only too glad to avail myself of the first decent excuse, that offered itself, for retiring into silence.
The next day I wrote to Arthur, with as much of a reprimand for his long silence as I
B 2
