"Why, Robin, you were wonderful once; and now you
are simply not a bad sort of fellow, who imagines him-
self to be the hit of the entire piece. And whether she's
dead or not, she never had two grains of sense, but }ust
enough to make a spectacle of you, even now."

"I regret that I should have sailed so far into the north
of your opinion," said I. "Though, as I dare assert, you
are quite probably in the right. So I *11 be off to my
husks again, Bettie." And I kissed her hand. "And
that too is only for old sake's sake, dear," I said.
Then I returned to the railway station in time for the
afternoon train. And I spoke with no one else in Fair-
haven, except to grimt "Good evening, gentlemen," as I
passed Clarriker's Emporium, where Colonel Snawley
and Dr. Jeal were sitting in arm chairs, very much as I
had left them there two years ago.
3

It was a long while afterward I discovered that "some



156 THE CORDS 0F» VANITY

damned good-natured friend," as Sir Fretful has immor-
tally phrased it, had told Bettie Hamlyn of seeing me at
the theatre in Lichfield, with Stella and her marvellous
dinner-company. It was by an odd quirk the once
Aurelia Minns, in Lichfield for the "summer's shop-
ping," who had told Bettie. And the fact is that I had
written Bettie upon the day of Stella's death and, with-
out explicitly saying so, had certainly conveyed the im-
pression I had reached Lichfield that very morning, and
was simply stopping over for Stella's funeral. And, in
addition, I cannot say that Bettie and Stella were par-
ticularly fond of each other.
