Checkmate - The Original Classic Edition. Fanu Joseph

is still raging, he tells me,

       and that he can't appear in this house."

       54

       "It is a great pity," said she.

       "Pity! Not at all. They never could agree; and it is much better for Dick they should not--on the terms Reginald proposes, at least. I

       see Lady May trying to induce you to make her the sign at which ladies rise, and leave us poor fellows to shift for ourselves." "Ungallant old man! I really believe she is."

       And in a moment more the ladies were floating from the room, Vivian Darnley standing at the door. Somehow he could not catch Alice's eye as they passed; she was smiling an answer to some gabble of Lady May's. Grace gave him a very kind look with her fine eyes as she went by; and so the young man, who had followed them up the massive stairs with his gaze, closed the door and sat down again, before his claret glass, and his little broken cluster of grapes, and half-dozen distracted bits of candied fruit, and sighed deeply.

       "That murder in the City that you were speaking of just now to Lady May is a serious business for men who walk the streets, as I do

       sometimes, with money in their pockets," said David Arden, addressing Mr. Longcluse.