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Sydney Campion had done a year's hard and remunerative work since he paid his last visit to Angleford, and the result more than answered his expectations.

When the courts were sitting he was fully absorbed in his briefs; but now and again he took life easily enough—at any rate, so far as the law was concerned. In the autumn it had been his custom to live abroad for a month or two; at Christmas and Easter he invariably found his way to his club in the afternoon, and finished the evening over a rubber of whist.

It was a rare occasion when Sydney was able, in the middle of term, to leave his chambers between three and four o'clock, and stroll in a leisurely way along the Embankment, peacefully smoking a cigar. The chance came to him one sultry day in June. There was no case for him to master, nothing proceeding in which he was specially interested, and he did not feel disposed to sit down and improvise a case for himself, as he used to do in his earlier days. He was minded to be idle; and we may accompany him in his westward walk along the river side to Hungerford Bridge, and up the Avenue to Pall Mall.

On the steps of the Oligarchy Club he found his old friend, Pynsent, just starting for the House. The time was one of great excitement for those who had not lost their interest in the politics of the day. The Irish Land Bill was in Committee, and the Conservatives had strenuously opposed it, fighting, as they knew, a losing battle, yet not without consolations. This very week they had run the Government so close that the transfer of three votes would have put them in a minority; and Sir John Pynsent, who was always a sanguine man, had convinced himself that the Liberal party was on the point of breaking up.

"They are sure to go to pieces," he said to Campion; "and it would be a strange thing if they did not. What Heneage has done already some other Whig with a conscience will do again, and more effectually. You will see we shall be back in office before the year is out. No Ministry and no majority could bear the strain which the Old Man is putting on his followers—it is simply impossible. The worth and birth of the country are sick of this veiled communism that they call justice to Ireland—sick of democratic sycophancy—deadly sick of the Old Man. You mark my words, dear boy: there will be a great revolt against him before many months have passed. I see it working. I find it in the House, in the clubs, in the drawing-rooms; and I don't speak merely as my wishes lead me."

"No doubt you are right as to London; but how about the country?"

"The provinces waver more than the metropolis, I admit; but I don't despair of seeing a majority even in the English boroughs. Ah, Campion I never see you without saying to myself, 'There goes the man who lost us Dormer.' You would have won that election, I am certain."

"Well," said Sydney, "you know why I could not fight. The will, the money, everything was ready: but——"

"True, I forgot. I beg your pardon!"

"Not at all! But I will fight for you some day—as soon as you like. Bear that in mind, Pynsent!"

"To be sure I will, my dear fellow. We must have you in the House. I have often said so."

And the energetic baronet hurried away, whilst Sydney entered the Club, and made straight for the smoking-room. Here he found others just as eager to predict the downfall of the Government as Sir John Pynsent had been; but he was not in the mood to listen to a number of young men all of the same mind, all of-doubtful intellectual calibre, and all sure to say what he had heard a dozen times already. So he passed on to the billiard-room, and finding that a pool was just beginning, took a ball and played.

That served to pass the time until six o'clock, when he went upstairs and read the evening papers for an hour; and at seven he had his dinner and a bottle of wine. Meanwhile he had met two or three friends, with whom he kept up a lively conversation on the events of the day, seasoned by many a pungent joke, and fatal (for the moment) to many a reputation. It is a habit fostered by club life—as, no doubt, it is fostered in the life of the drawing-room, for neither sex is exempt—to sacrifice the repute of one's absent acquaintance with a light heart, not in malice, but more as a parrot bites the finger that feeds it, in sport, or even in affection. If we backbite our friends, we give them free permission to backbite us, or we know that they do it, which amounts to pretty much the same thing. The biting may not be very severe, and, as a rule, it leaves no scars; but, of course, there are exceptions to the rule.

The secret history of almost every man or woman who has mixed at all in polite society is sure to be known by some one or other in the clubs and drawing-rooms. If there is anything to your discredit in your past life, anything which you would blot out if you could with rivers of repentance or expiation, you may be pretty sure that at some time, when you might least expect it, this thing has been, or will be, the subject of discourse and dissection amongst your friends. It may not be told in an injurious or exaggerated manner, and it may not travel far; but none the less do you walk on treacherous shale, which may give way at any moment under your feet. The art of living, if you are afraid of the passing of your secret from the few who know to the many who welcome a new scandal, is to go on walking with the light and confident step of youth, never so much as quailing in your own mind at the thought that the ground may crumble beneath you—that you may go home some fine day, or to your club, or to Lady Jane's five o'clock tea, and be confronted by the grinning skeleton on whom you had so carefully turned your keys and shot your bolts.

No doubt there are men and women so refined and kindly in their nature that they have absolutely no appetite for scandal—never speak it, or listen to it, or remember what they have overheard. Sydney and his friends were troubled by no such qualms, and, if either of them had been, he would not have been so ill-mannered as to spoil sport for the rest.

After dinner they had gone upstairs to the members' smoking room, in a comfortable corner of which they were lazily continuing their conversation. It turned by chance on a certain barrister of Sydney's inn, a Mr. Barrington Baynes, whom one of the party not incorrectly described as "that beautiful, bumptious, and briefless barrister, B. B."

"He gives himself great airs," said Captain Williams, a swaggering, supercilious man, for whom Sydney had no affection, and who was not one of Sydney's admirers. "To hear him talk one would imagine he was a high authority on every subject under the sun, but I suspect he has very little to go upon. Has he ever held a brief, Campion?"

"I never heard of it, if he did. One of those poor devils who take to journalism, and usually end by going to the dogs. You will find his name on the covers of magazines, and I fancy he does something, in the reviewing way."

It was an unfortunate speech for Sydney to make, and Captain Williams did not fail to seize his opportunity of giving the sharp-tongued lawyer—who perhaps knew better how to thrust than to parry in such encounters—a wholesome snub.

Fortune favored him. The current number of The Decade was lying on the table beside him. He took it up in a casual sort of way, and glanced at the list of contents.

"By the bye, Campion," he said, "you are not a married man, are you? I see magazine articles now and then signed Lettice Campion; no relation, I suppose."

"That is my sister," Sydney answered, quietly enough. But it was plain that the hit had told; and he was vexed with himself for being so snobbish as to deserve a sneer from a man like Williams.

"I have had the pleasure of meeting Miss Campion two or three times lately at Mrs. Hartley's, in Kensington," said another of the quartette. This was none other than Brooke Dalton, whom Sydney always liked. He spoke in a confidential undertone, with the kindly intention of covering Sydney's embarrassment. "Mrs. Hartley is a cousin of mine; and, though I say it, she brings some very nice people together sometimes. By the way, have you ever seen a man of the name of Walcott—Alan Walcott: a man who writes poetry, and so forth?"

"I know him by name, that is all. I have heard people say he is one of the best poets we have; but I don't pretend to understand our latter-day bards."

"You never met him?"

"No."

"Well, then," said Mr. Dalton, who, though a justice of the peace, and the oldest of the four, could give them all points and beat them as a retailer of gossip; "well, then, that leaves me free to tell you as curious a little history as any I know. But mind, you fellows," he continued, as the others pricked up their ears and prepared to listen, "this is not a story for repetition, and I pledge you to silence before I say another word."

"Honor bright!" said Charles Milton; and the captain nodded his head.

"The facts are these: Five or six years ago, I knew a little of Alan Walcott. I had made his acquaintance in a fortuitous way, and he once did me a good turn by coming forward as a witness in the police court."

"Confession is good for the soul," Milton interjected.

"Well, I was summoned for thrashing a cabman, and I should certainly have been fined if Walcott had not contrived to put the matter in its proper light. For a month or two we saw a good deal of each other, and I rather liked him. He was frank and open in his ways, and though not a well-to-do man, I never observed anything about him that was mean or unhandsome. I did not know that he was married at first, but gradually I put two and two together, and found that he came out now and again to enjoy a snatch of personal freedom, which he could not always make sure of at home.

"Once I saw his wife, and only once. She was a strikingly handsome Frenchwoman, of that bold and flaunting type which generally puts an Englishman on his guard—all paint and powder and cosmetics; you know the style!"

"Not exactly a poetic ideal," said Sydney.

"That is just what I thought at the time; and she seems to have been still less so in character. When I saw her she was terribly excited about some trifle or other—treated Walcott like a dog, without the slightest consideration for his feelings or mine, stood over him with a knife, and ended with a fit of shrieking hysterics."

"Drink or jealousy?" Captain Williams asked.

"Perhaps a little of both. Walcott told me afterwards that that was his daily and nightly experience, and that he was making up his mind to end it. I never knew what he meant by that, but it was impressed upon my memory by the cool sort of way in which he said it, and a quiet look in his eyes which evidently meant mischief. About a fortnight later they went abroad, rather in a hurry; and for some time I heard nothing more of them. Then I went to Aix-les-Bains, and came on the scene just after a frightful row. It seems that a French admirer of hers had followed her to Aix, and attacked Walcott, and even struck him in the hotel gardens. The proprietor and the police had to interfere, and I came across Walcott just as he was looking for some one to act as second. There had been a challenge, and all that sort of thing; and, un-English as it seems, I thought Walcott perfectly right, and acted as his friend throughout the affair. It was in no way a remarkable duel: the French fellow was shot in the arm and got away to Switzerland, and we managed to keep it dark. Walcott was not hurt, and went back to his hotel."

"What did the woman do?" asked Williams, curiously.

"That's the odd part of it. Husband and wife seem to have made it up, for in a day or two they went on to Culoz, had luncheon there, and went out for a walk together. From that walk, Mrs. Alan Walcott did not return. Now comes the mystery: what happened in the course of that walk near Culoz? All that is known is that the landlady saw Walcott returning by himself two or three hours later, and that when she questioned him he replied that madame had taken her departure. What do you think of that for a bit of suggested melodrama?"

"It lacks finish," said Milton.

"I can't see where the poetry comes in," observed the captain.

"It certainly looked black for Walcott," Sydney remarked. "I suppose there was a regular hue and cry—a search for the body, and all that kind of thing?"

"So far as I know, there was nothing of the sort. Nobody seems to have had any suspicion at the time. The peasants at Culoz seemed to have talked about it a little, and some weeks afterwards the English people at Aix-les-Bains got hold of it, and a friend of mine tried to extract information from the landlady. But he was unsuccessful: the landlady could not positively affirm that there was anything wrong. And—perhaps there was not," Mr. Dalton concluded, with a burst of Christian charity which was creditable to him, considering how strong were his objections to Walcott's friendship with Miss Campion.

The captain leaned his head back, sent a pillar of smoke up to the ceiling, and laughed aloud.

"There is no question about it," said Milton, "that Walcott got out of it cheaply. I would not be in his shoes for any money, even now."

"Is this business widely known?" Sydney asked. "It is strange that I never heard anything about it."

He was thinking that the acquaintance of Mr. Alan Walcott could not in any case be a desirable thing for Miss Lettice Campion. From the manner in which Dalton had introduced the subject he felt pretty sure that the attention paid by this man to his sister had been noticed, and that his friend was actuated by a sense, of duty in giving him warning as to the facts within his knowledge.

"I don't wonder you never heard of it," said Dalton. "I am not aware of anyone in England who ever did, except myself. I have not mentioned it before, because I am not sure that it is fair to Walcott to do so. But I know you men will not repeat what I have been telling you."

"Not a word," said Captain Williams and Charles Milton, in a breath.

Yet in less than a week from that time the whole story made its appearance in one of the baser personal journals, and people were discussing who the "well-known poet" was, and whether "the buried secret" would presently come to light again.

And Alan Walcott saw the paragraph, and felt that he had not yet quite done with his past, and wondered at the dispensation of Providence which permitted the writers of such paragraphs to live and thrive.

But a good deal was to happen before that paragraph was printed; and in the meantime Dalton and Campion went off to look for partners in a rubber, without supposing for a moment that they had delivered a stab in the back to one who had never done an injury to either of them.