When the dance was over and the party had broken up, Doreen, who had done her best to keep up the spirits of the rest, broke down.  Max met her on her way to her room, and saw that the tears were very near her eyes.

“What’s the matter now?” said he, crossly.  “You seemed all right downstairs.  I thought you and Lindsay seemed to be getting on very well together.”

“Did you?  Well, you were wrong,” said she, briefly, as she shut herself into the room.

CHAPTER XVI.

A MESSAGE FROM THE WHARF.

Christmas was over, and The Beeches had subsided into its normal state of prosperous tranquility.  Max had had a fresh situation discovered for him, and he was now wasting his time on a stool in a merchant’s office, as he had wasted it in other offices many times before.  His father’s chronic state of exasperation with his laziness was growing acute, and he had informed Max that unless he chose to stick to his work this time he would have to be shipped off to the Cape.  No entreaties on the part of Mrs. Wedmore or the girls were of any avail against this fixed resolution on Mr. Wedmore’s part, or against the inflexible laziness of Max himself.  He detested office work, and he confessed that if he was not to be allowed to lead the country life he loved, he would prefer enlistment in the Cape Mounted Police to drudgery in a dark corner of a city office.

It was on a foggy evening in January that Max, for the first time in three weeks (an unprecedented interval), knocked at the door of Dudley Horne’s chambers.

There was a long delay, and Max, after a second knock, was going to withdraw, in the belief that Dudley was not in, after all, when he heard slow steps within, and paused.

The door was opened a very little way, and Dudley looked out.

Max stared at him for a moment without speaking.  For over his friend there had passed some great change.  Dudley had never been florid of complexion, but now he looked ghastly.  His face had always been grave and strong rather than cheerful, but now the expression of his countenance was forbidding.

He looked at Max, glanced down the stairs, and nodded without a smile.

“Hello!” said he, with the letter of familiarity, but without its spirit.  “Haven’t seen anything of you for a century.  Up in town again, eh?”

“Yes.  Can’t I come in?” said Max.

Dudley had come outside instead of inviting his friend in.  At these words, however, he turned abruptly, and himself led the way into the little ante-chamber.

“Oh, yes, oh, yes, come in, of course.  Come in.”

Max accepted the cool invitation in silence, shut the door behind him, and followed his friend into the sitting-room, where the table was laid for a solitary dinner.

But it was the writing-table which caught the eye of Max and riveted his attention.  For a photograph lay there, a woman’s photograph, and as it was just in front of the chair Dudley had been using, as if he had been occupied in looking at it, it was not unnatural that the brother of Doreen should be curious to know whose picture it was.