A Laodicean

'These runs of luck will be your ruin, as I have told you before,' continued Captain De Stancy. 'You will be for repeating and repeating your experiments, and will end by blowing your brains out, as wiser heads than yours have done. I am glad you have come away, at any rate. Why did you travel this way?'

'Simply because I could afford it, of course.--But come, captain, something has ruffled you to-day. I thought you did not look in the best temper the moment I saw you. Every sip you took of your pick-up as you sat there showed me something was wrong. Tell your worry!'

'Pooh--I can tell you in two words,' said the captain satirically. 'Your arrangement for my wealth and happiness--for I suppose you still claim it to be yours--has fallen through. The lady has announced to-day that she means to send for Somerset instantly. She is coming to a personal explanation with him. So woe to me--and in another sense, woe to you, as I have reason to fear.'

'Send for him!' said Dare, with the stillness of complete abstraction. 'Then he'll come.'

'Well,' said De Stancy, looking him in the face. 'And does it make you feel you had better be off? How about that telegram? Did he ask you to send it, or did he not?'

'One minute, or I shall be up such a tree as nobody ever saw the like of.'

'Then what did you come here for?' burst out De Stancy. ''Tis my belief you are no more than a--But I won't call you names; I'll tell you quite plainly that if there is anything wrong in that message to her--which I believe there is--no, I can't believe, though I fear it--you have the chance of appearing in drab clothes at the expense of the Government before the year is out, and I of being eternally disgraced!'

'No, captain, you won't be disgraced. I am bad to beat, I can tell you. And come the worst luck, I don't say a word.'

'But those letters pricked in your skin would say a good deal, it strikes me.'

'What! would they strip me?--but it is not coming to that. Look here, now, I'll tell you the truth for once; though you don't believe me capable of it. I DID concoct that telegram--and sent it; just as a practical joke; and many a worse one has been only laughed at by honest men and officers. I could show you a bigger joke still--a joke of jokes--on the same individual.'