CHAPTER

     I the past intervenes
    II jilted! 
   III the two women
    IV Jimmy gets news
     V Sangster takes A hand
    VI Jimmy demands the truth
   VII love and Poverty
  VIII the second engagement
    IX motherless
     X Jimmy has A visitor
    XI husband and wife
   XII Sangster is consulted
  XIII Christine hears the truth
   XIV bitterness
    XV Sangster Speaks in Riddles
   XVI the past returns
  XVII Jimmy Breaks out
 XVIII Kettering hears something
   XIX A chance meeting
    XX love locked out
   XXI the compact
  XXII too late! 
 XXIII the unexpected

THE SECOND HONEYMOON

CHAPTER I

THE PAST INTERVENES

James Challoner, known to his friends and intimates as Jimmy, brushed an imaginary speck of dust from the shoulder of his dinner jacket, and momentarily stopped his cheery whistling to stare at himself in the glass with critical eyes.

Jimmy was feeling very pleased with himself in particular and the world in general.  He was young, and quite passably good-looking, he had backed a couple of winners that day for a nice little sum, and he was engaged to a woman with whom he had been desperately in love for at least three months.

Three months was a long time for Jimmy Challoner to be in love (as a rule, three days was the outside limit which he allowed himself), but this—­well, this was the real thing at last—­the real, romantic thing of which author chaps and playwright Johnnies wrote; the thing which sweeps a man clean off his feet and paints the world with rainbow tints.

Jimmy Challoner was sure of it.  His usually merry eyes sobered a little as he met their solemn reflection in the mirror.  He took up a silver-backed brush and carefully smoothed down a kink of hair which stood aggressively erect above the rest.  It was a confounded nuisance, that obstinate wave in his hair, making him look like a poet or a drawing-room actor.

Not that he objected to actors and the stage in the very least; on the contrary, he had the profoundest admiration for them, at which one could hardly wonder seeing that Cynthia—­bless her heart!—­was at present playing lead in one of the suburban theatres, and that at that very moment a pass for the stage box reposed happily in an inner pocket of his coat.

Cynthia was fast making a name for herself.  In his adoring eyes she was perfect, and in his blissful heart he was confident that one day all London would be talking about her.  Her photographs would be In every shop window, and people would stand all day outside the pit and gallery to cheer her on first nights.

When he voiced these sentiments to Cynthia herself, she only laughed and called him a “silly boy”; but he knew that she was pleased to hear them all the same.