’By Jove!  I’ll try the bustard to-morrow night, and then I’ll go back to town next day,’ thought Logan.  ’I am doing no good here, and I don’t like it.  I shall tell Merton that I have moral objections to the whole affair.  Miserable, mercenary fraud!’ Thus, feeling very moral and discontented, Logan walked back to the house, carefully avoiding the ghostly robes that still glimmered on the lawn, and did not re-enter the house till bedtime.

The following day began as the last had done; Lord Embleton and Miss Willoughby retiring to the muniment-room, the lovers vanishing among the walks.  Scremerston later took Logan to consult Fenwick, who visibly brightened at the idea of night-fishing.

‘You must take one of those long landing-nets, Logan,’ said Scremerston.  ’They are about as tall as yourself, and as stout as lance-shafts.  They are for steadying you when you wade, and feeling the depth of the water in front of you.’

Scremerston seemed very pensive.  The day was hot; they wandered to the smoking-room.  Scremerston took up a novel, which he did not read; Logan began a letter to Merton—­a gloomy epistle.

‘I say, Logan,’ suddenly said Scremerston, ’if your letter is not very important, I wish you would listen to me for a moment.’

Logan turned round.  ‘Fire away,’ he said; ‘my letter can wait.’

Scremerston was in an attitude of deep dejection.  Logan lit a cigarette and waited.

‘Logan, I am the most miserable beggar alive.’

‘What is the matter?  You seem rather in-and-out in your moods,’ said Logan.

’Why, you know, I am in a regular tight place.  I don’t know how to put it.  You see, I can’t help thinking that—­that—­I have rather committed myself—­it seems a beastly conceited thing to say—­that there’s a girl who likes me, I’m afraid.’

‘I don’t want to be inquisitive, but is she in this country?’ asked Logan.

‘No; she’s at Homburg.’

‘Has it gone very far?  Have you said anything?’ asked Logan.

‘No; my father did not like it.  I hoped to bring him round.’

‘Have you written anything?  Do you correspond?’

‘No, but I’m afraid I have looked a lot.’

As the Viscount Scremerston’s eyes were by no means fitted to express with magnetic force the language of the affections, Logan had to command his smile.

‘But why have you changed your mind, if you liked her?’ he asked.

‘Oh, you know very well!  Can anybody see her and not love her?’ said
Scremerston, with a vagueness in his pronouns, but referring to Miss
Willoughby.

Logan was inclined to reply that he could furnish, at first hand, an exception to the rule, but this appeared tactless.

’No one, I daresay, whose affections were not already engaged, could see her without loving her; but I thought yours had been engaged to a lady now at Homburg?’