He came into my room for a little visit before going to bed.  There, candle in hand, he gazed long and earnestly into my chimney-glass.

‘Yes,’ he sighed at last, ’it is solely in the quantity of my hair that the resemblance fails.’

I understood now why he trained it back and plastered it down over his scalp, as he did; at a rough glance, you might have got the impression that the crown of his head was bald.  I suppose he is the only man in two hemispheres who finds the opposite condition a matter of regret.

FLOWER O’ THE QUINCE

I.

Theodore Vellan had been out of England for more than thirty years.  Thirty odd years ago the set he lived in had been startled and mystified by his sudden flight and disappearance.  At that time his position here had seemed a singularly pleasant one.  He was young—­he was seven- or eight-and-twenty; he was fairly well off—­he had something like three thousand a year, indeed; he belonged to an excellent family, the Shropshire Vellans, of whom the titled head, Lord Vellan of Norshingfield, was his uncle; he was good-looking, amiable, amusing, popular; and he had just won a seat in the House of Commons (as junior member for Sheffingham), where, since he was believed to be ambitious as well as clever, it was generally expected that he would go far.

Then, quite suddenly, he had applied for the Chiltern Hundreds, and left England.  His motives for this unlikely course he explained to no one.  To a few intimate friends he wrote brief letters of farewell.  ’I am off for a journey round the world.  I shall be gone an indefinite time.’  The indefinite time ended by defining itself as upwards of thirty years, for the first twenty of which only his solicitor and his bankers could have given you his address, and they wouldn’t.  For the last ten he was understood to be living in the island of Porto Rico, and planting sugar.  Meanwhile his uncle had died, and his cousin (his uncle’s only son) had succeeded to the peerage.  But the other day his cousin, too, had died, and died childless, so that the estates and dignities had devolved upon himself.  With that, a return to England became an obligation; there were a score of minor beneficiaries under his cousin’s will, whose legacies could not, without great delay, be paid unless the new lord was at hand.

II.

Mrs Sandryl-Kempton sat before the fire in her wide, airy, faded drawing-room, and thought of the Theodore Vellan of old days, and wondered what the present Lord Vellan would be like.  She had got a note from him that morning, despatched from Southampton the day before, announcing, ’I shall be in town to-morrow—­at Bowden’s Hotel, in Cork Street,’ and asking when he might come to her.  She had answered by telegraph, ‘Come and dine at eight to-night,’ to which he had wired back an acceptance.  Thereupon, she had told her son that he must dine at his club; and now she was seated before her fire, waiting for Theodore Vellan to arrive, and thinking of thirty years ago.