ILLUSTRATIONS

“Food for the gods, and only A boy to eat it” (Frontispiece)

“We really want you, said Molly”

“Sometimes jack drove, with Molly beside him”

“The blue flame of the chafing-dish”

“I was suddenly clapped upon the shoulder”

“Treading the road built by Napoleon”

“There was A pang when I turned my back”

“That is the dejeuner of Napoleon”

“Down, Turk!” “Be quiet, Jupiter!”

“On the ground crouched the boy”

“‘Do you know,’ said I, ‘you are A very queer boy’”

“Looking out of the window I saw him in conversation”

“Sitting with my back to the horses”

“Here we were at Annecy”

“Voila monsieur!”

“The rock of Monaco”

CHAPTER I

Woman Disposes

“Away, away, from men and towns,
To the wild wood and the downs,
To the silent wilderness.” 
—­Percy BYSSHE Shelley.

“To your happiness,” I said, lifting my glass, and looking the girl in the eyes.  She had the grace to blush, which was the least that she could do, for a moment ago she had jilted me.

The way of it was this.

I had met her and her mother the winter before at Davos, where I had been sent after South Africa, and a spell of playing fast and loose with my health—­a possession usually treated as we treat the poor, whom we expect to have always with us.  Helen Blantock had been the success of her season in London, had paid for her triumphs with a breakdown, and we had stopped at the same hotel.

The girl’s reputation as a beauty had marched before her, blowing trumpets.  She was the prettiest girl in Davos, as she had been the prettiest in London; and I shared with other normal, self-respecting men the amiable weakness of wishing to monopolise the woman most wanted by others.  During the process I fell in love, and Helen was kind.

Lady Blantock, a matron of comfortable rotundity of figure and a placid way of folding plump, white hands, had, however, a contradictorily cold and watchful eye, which I had feared at first; but it had softened for me, and I accepted the omen.  In the spring, when my London tyrant had pronounced me “sound as a bell,” I had proposed to Helen.  The girl said neither yes nor no, but she had eyes and a smile which needed no translation, so I kissed her (it was in a conservatory at a dance) and was happy—­for a fortnight.