Alone with his guest in the large dining-room, and compelled to make only pretence of eating and drinking, he talked of many things with the old spontaneity, the accustomed liberal kindliness, and dropped at length upon the subject Piers was waiting for.

“You know, I daresay, that Arnold is going to marry?”

“I have heard of it,” Piers answered, with the best smile he could command.

“You can imagine it pleases me.  I don’t see how he could have been luckier.  Dr. Derwent is one of the finest men I know, and his daughter is worthy of him.”

“She is, I am sure,” said Piers, in a balanced voice, which sounded mere civility.

And when silence had lasted rather too long, the host having fallen into reverie, he added: 

“Will it take place soon?”

“Ah—­the wedding?  About Christmas, I think.  Arnold is looking for a house.  By the bye, you know young Derwent—­Eustace?”

Piers answered that he had only the slightest acquaintance with the young man.

“Not brilliant, I think,” said Mr. Jacks musingly.  “But amiable, straight.  I don’t know that he’ll do much at the Bar.”

Again he lost himself for a little, his knitted brows seeming to indicate an anxious thought.

“Now you shall tell me anything you care to, about business,” said the host, when they had seated themselves in the library.  “And after that I have something to show you—­something you’ll like to see, I think.”

Otway’s curiosity was at a loss when presently he saw his host take from a drawer a little packet of papers.

“I had forgotten all about these,” said Mr. Jacks.  “They are manuscripts of your father; writings of various kinds which he sent me in the early fifties.  Turning out my old papers, I came across them the other day, and thought I would give them to you.”

He rustled the faded sheets, glancing over them with a sad smile.

“There’s an amusing thing—­called ‘Historical Fragment.’  I remember, oh I remember very well, how it pleased me when I first read it.”

He read it aloud now, with many a chuckle, many a pause of sly emphasis.

“’The Story of the last war between the Asiatic kingdoms of Duroba and Kalaya, though it has reached us in a narrative far too concise, is one of the most interesting chapters in the history of ancient civilisation.

“’They were bordering states, peopled by races closely akin, whose languages, it appears, were mutually intelligible; each had developed its own polity, and had advanced to a high degree of refinement in public and private life.  Wars between them had been frequent, but at the time with which we are concerned the spirit of hostility was all but forgotten in a happy peace of long duration.  Each country was ruled by an aged monarch, beloved of the people, but, under the burden of years, grown of late somewhat less vigilant than was consistent with popular welfare.  Thus it came to pass that power fell into the hands of unscrupulous statesmen, who, aided by singular circumstances, succeeded in reviving for a moment the old sanguinary jealousies.