The date and place followed.

Portlaw was making considerable noise over the matter, running about distractedly with little, short, waddling steps.  Occasionally he aimed a kick at a stuffed arm-chair, which did not hurt his foot too much.

It was some time before he calmed enough to pout and fume and protest in his usual manner, appealing alternately to Heaven as witness and to Hamil for corroboration that he had been outrageously used.

“Now, who the devil could suspect him of such intention!” wailed poor Portlaw.  “God knows, he was casual with the sex.  There have been dozens of them, Hamil, literally dozens in every port!—­from Mamie and Stella up to Gladys and Ethelberta!  Yes, he was Harry to some and Reginald to others—­high, low—­and the game, Hamil—­the game amused him; but so help me kings and aces!  I never looked for this—­never so help me; and I thought him as safe with the Vere-de-Veres as he was with the Pudding Sisters, Farina and Tapioca!  And now”—­passionately displaying the engraved card—­“look who’s here!...  O pip!  What’s the use.”

Dinner modified his grief; hope bubbled in the Burgundy, simmered in the soup, grew out of gravy like the sturdy, eternal weed she is, parasitic in the human breast.

“He’s probably married a million or so,” suggested Portlaw, mollified under the seductive appeal of a fruit salad dressed with a mixture containing nearly a hundred different ingredients.  “If he has I don’t see why he shouldn’t build a camp next to mine.  I’ll give him the land—­if he doesn’t care to pay for it,” he added cautiously.  “Don’t say anything to him about it, Hamil.  After all, why shouldn’t he pay for the land?...  But if he doesn’t want to—­between you and me—­I’ll come within appreciable distance of almost giving him what land he needs....  O gee!  O fizz!  That damn Louis!...  And I’m wondering—­about several matters—­”

After dinner Portlaw settled down by the fire, cigar lighted, and began to compose a letter to Malcourt, embodying his vivid ideas concerning a new house near his own for the bridal pair.

Hamil went out into the fresh April night.  The young grass was wet under the stars; a delicate fragrance of new buds filled the air.

He had been walking for a long time, when the first far hint of thunder broke the forest silence.  Later lightning began to quiver through the darkness; a wind awaking overhead whispered prophecy, wailed it, foreboding; then slowly the woods filled with the roar of the rain.

He was moving on, blindly, at random, conscious only of the necessity of motion.  Where the underbrush halted him he sheered off into the open timber, feeling his way, falling sometimes, lying where he fell for a while till the scourge of necessity lashed him into motion again.

About midnight the rain increased to a deluge, slackened fitfully, and died out in a light rattle of thunder; star after star broke out through the dainty vapours overhead; the trees sighed and grew quiet.  For a while drumming drops from the branches filled the silence with a musical tattoo, then there remained no sound save, far away in the darkness, the muffled roar of some brook, brimming bank-high with the April rain.  And Hamil, soaked, exhausted, and believing he could sleep, went back to the house.  Toward morning sleep came.