Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 1).djvu/610

 "It makes me rather serious, you know."

"Of course. Wish I could be there. Now, no nonsense, Arthur. Will seventy-five be enough? Isn't it cutting it rather close? Don't spoil the honeymoon for a ha'porth of tar. You can have a couple of hundred if you like. I've got it by me."

"Well, make it a hundred," said Arthur. "It will be safer perhaps. Adelaide might take a fancy to a new bonnet."

"Or to some chocolate creams, or to the moon and stars," said Jack, with a good-humoured smile, "and you'd get them for her. Say a hundred and fifty."

"All right. A hundred and fifty."

Jack Stevens, shaded by his friend's tall form—for several persons passed them as they were talking—counted out thirty five-pound Bank of England notes, and slipped them into Arthur's hand.

"Thank you, Jack."

"Not necessary. Good night, old fellow, and good luck to you. Kiss the pretty bride for me, and give her my love."

"I will, old man."

A few minutes afterwards Arthur Gooch was in his chambers, "clearing up," as he called it. He wanted to leave things as orderly as he could, and in the accomplishment of this laudable design there was a great deal to do. All the time he was writing and tearing up papers and burning them, and packing bags and portmanteaux, he was thinking of Adelaide.

"Dear little woman! I wonder if she is asleep. She hasn't left things to the last as I have done. Altogether too tidy for that. While I am fussing about in this musty room—what a cosy nest we shall come home to after the honeymoon!—there she lies, with a smile on her pretty mouth, dreaming of me. Your health, my darling!"

He had opened a bottle of champagne, of which he had already drunk a glass, and now he poured out another, and as he held it up to the light he saw Adelaide's bright eyes amid the sparkling bubbles.

"Your health, my darling, and God bless you!"

He drained the glass, and set it down.

It was really a love match, of which there are more in this prosaic world than cynics will admit. These young people were all the world to each other, and if anything had occurred to prevent the wedding coming off their hearts would have been broken.

Arthur set the glass upon the table with a tender light in his eyes, and as he did so he heard a ring at the street door below. As has been stated, his chambers were at the top of the house, but everything was very quiet, and that is why he heard the bell so plainly. The window of the room in which he was working looked out upon the street. He took no notice of the ringing, and proceeded dreamily with his packing. The wine he had drunk intensified his sentimental mood, and he paused many times to gaze upon the portrait of his darling which stood in the centre of the mantelpiece. It was a speaking likeness of the beautiful face; the eyes seemed to look