“Nothing very good,” answered Will, frowning.  “He seems to be still playing the fool.  I’ve seen him only once in the last fortnight, and then it was evident he’d been drinking.  I couldn’t help saying a plain word or two, and he turned sullen.  I called at his place last night, but he wasn’t there; his landlady tells me he’s been out of town several times lately, and he’s done no work.”

“Has the girl gone?”

“A week ago.  I have a letter from Ralph Pomfret.  The good old chap worries about this affair; so does Mrs. Pomfret.  He doesn’t say it plainly, but I suspect Franks has been behaving theatrically down at Ashstead; it’s possible he went there in the same state in which I saw him last.  Pomfret would have done well to punch his head, but I’ve no doubt they’ve stroked and patted and poor-fellow’d him—­ the very worst thing for Franks.”

“Or for any man,” remarked Sherwood.

“Worse for him than for most.  I wish I had more of the gift of brutality; I see a way in which I might do him good; but it goes against the grain with me.”

“That I can believe,” said Godfrey, with his pleasantest look and nod.

“I was afraid he might somehow scrape together money enough to pursue her to Egypt.  Perhaps he’s trying for that.  The Pomfrets want me to go down to Ashstead and have a talk with them about him.  Whether he managed to see the girl before she left England, I don’t know.”

“After all, he has been badly treated,” said Sherwood sympathetically.

“Well, yes, he has.  But a fellow must have common sense, most of all with regard to women.  I’m rather afraid Franks might think it a fine thing to go to the devil because he’s been jilted.  It isn’t fashionable nowadays; there might seem to be a sort of originality about it.”

They talked for a few minutes of business matters, and Sherwood briskly went his way.

Four days passed.  Warburton paid a visit to the Pomfrets, and had from them a confirmation of all he suspected regarding Norbert Franks.  The artist’s behaviour at Ashstead had been very theatrical indeed; he talked much of suicide, preferably by the way of drink, and, when dissuaded from this, with a burst of tears—­veritable tears—­begged Ralph Pomfret to lend him money enough to go to Cairo; on which point, also, he met with kindliest opposition.  Thereupon, he had raged for half an hour against some treacherous friend, unnamed.  Who this could be, the Pomfrets had no idea.  Warburton, though he affected equal ignorance, could not doubt but that it was himself, and he grew inwardly angry.  Franks had been to Bath, and had obtained a private interview with Winifred Elvan, in which (Winifred wrote to her aunt) he had demeaned himself very humbly and pathetically, first of all imploring the sister’s help with Rosamund, and, when she declared she could do nothing, entreating to be told whether or not he was ousted by a rival.  Rather impatient with the artist’s