He paces up still noisy Piccadilly, and then up silent Bond Street; pauses to look at some strange fish on Groves’s counter—­anything to while away the time; then he plods on toward the top of the street, and turns into Mr. Pillischer’s shop, and upstairs to the microscopic club-room.  There, at least, he can forget himself for an hour.

He looks round the neat pleasant little place, with its cases of curiosities, and its exquisite photographs, and bright brass instruments; its glass vases stocked with delicate water-plants and animalcules, with the sunlight gleaming through the green and purple seaweed fronds, while the air is fresh and fragrant with the seaweed scent; a quiet, cool little hermitage of science amid that great noisy, luxurious west-end world.  At least, it brings back to him the thought of the summer sea, and Aberalva, and his shore-studies:  but he cannot think of that any more.  It is past; and may God forgive him!

At one of the microscopes on the slab opposite him stands a sturdy bearded man, his back toward the Major; while the wise little German, hopeless of customers, is leaning over him in his shirt sleeves.

“But I never have seen its like; it had just like a painter’s easel in its stomach yesterday!”

“Why, it’s an Echinus Larva:  a sucking sea-urchin!  Hang it, if I had known you hadn’t seen one, I’d have brought up half-a-dozen of them!”

“May I look, sir?” asked the Major; “I, too, never have seen an Echinus Larva.”

The bearded man looks up.

“Major Campbell!”

“Mr. Thurnall!  I thought I could not be mistaken in the voice.”

“This is too pleasant, sir, to renew our watery loves together here,” said Tom:  but a second look at the Major’s face showed him that he was in no jesting mood.  “How is the party at Beddgelert?  I fancied you with them still.”

“They are all in London, at Lord Scoutbush’s house, in Eaton Square.”

“In London, at this dull time?  I trust nothing unpleasant has brought them here.”

“Mrs. Vavasour is very ill.  We had thoughts of sending for you, as the family physician was out of town:  but she was out of danger, thank God, in a few hours.  Now let me ask in turn after you.  I hope no unpleasant business brings you up three hundred miles from your practice?”

“Nothing, I assure you.  Only I have given up my Aberalva practice.  I am going to the East.”

“Like the rest of the world.”

“Not exactly.  You go as a dignified soldier of her Majesty’s; I as an undignified Abel Drugger, to dose Bashi-bazouks.”

“Impossible! and with such an opening as you had there!  You must excuse me; but my opinion of your prudence must not be so rudely shaken.”

“Why do you not ask the question which Balzac’s old Tourangeois judge asks, whenever a culprit is brought before him,—­’Who is she?’”

“Taking for granted that there was a woman at the bottom of every mishap?  I understand you,” said the Major, with a sad smile.  “Now let you and me walk a little together, and look at the Echinoid another day —­or when I return from Sevastopol—­”