“Oh, Tommy, upon my soul, it is good to see you here!  I was getting as dull as an owl.”

“Are you alone?” Wratislaw asked.

“George is staying here, but he has gone over to Glenaller to a big shoot.  I didn’t care much about it, so I stayed at home.  He will be back to-morrow.”

Lewis’s face in the firelight seemed cheerful and wholesome enough, but his words belied it.  Wratislaw wondered why this man, who had been wont to travel to the ends of the earth for good shooting, should deny himself the famous Glenaller coverts.

At dinner the lamplight showed him more clearly, and the worried look in his eyes could not be hidden.  He was listless, too, his kindly, boisterous manner seemed to have forsaken him, and he had acquired a great habit of abstracted silence.  He asked about recent events in the House, commenting shrewdly enough, but without interest.  When Wratislaw in turn questioned him on his doings, he had none of the ready enthusiasm which had been used to accompany his talk on sport.  He gave bare figures and was silent.

Afterwards in his own sanctum, with drawn curtains and a leaping fire, he became more cheerful.  It was hard to be moody in that pleasant room, with the light glancing from silver and vellum and dark oak, and a thousand memories about it of the clean, outdoor life.  Wratislaw stretched his legs to the blaze and watched the coils of blue smoke mounting from his pipe with a feeling of keen pleasure.  His errand was out of the focus of his thoughts.

It was Lewis himself who recalled him to the business.

“I thought of coming down to town,” he said.  “I have been getting out of spirits up here, and I wanted to be near you.”

“Then it was an excellent chance which brought me up to-night.  But why are you dull?  I thought you were the sort of man who is sufficient unto himself, you know.”

“I am not,” he said sharply.  “I never realized my gross insufficiency so bitterly.”

“Ah!” said Wratislaw, sitting up, “love?

“Did you happen to see Miss Wishart’s engagement in the papers?”

“I never read the papers.  But I have heard about this:  in fact, I believe I have congratulated Stocks.”

“Do you know that she ought to have married me?” Lewis cried almost shrilly.  “I swear she loved me.  It was only my hideous folly that drove her from me.”

“Folly?” said Wratislaw, smiling.  “Folly?  Well you might call it that.  I have come up ‘ane’s errand,’ as your people hereabouts say, to talk to you like a schoolmaster, Lewie.  Do you mind a good talking-to?”

“I need it,” he said.  “Only it won’t do any good, because I have been talking to myself for a month without effect.  Do you know what I am, Tommy?”

“I am prepared to hear,” said the other.

“A coward!  It sounds nice, doesn’t it?  I am a shirker, a man who would be drummed out of any regiment.”