we had better get some one else to find the carriage. Dr. Linister is over there. He is better engaged."
He was; he was among his brother physicists; they were eagerly asking questions and crowding round the Director. And the Theatre seemed filled with mad people, who surged and crowded and pushed.
"Come, Mamma," said Lady Mildred, pale, but with a red spot on either cheek, "we will leave them to fight it out."
Science had beaten love. She did not meet Harry Linister again that night. And when they met again, long years afterwards, he passed her by with eyes that showed he had clean forgotten her existence, unaltered though she was in face and form.
CHAPTER I.
THE SUPPER-BELL.
When the big bell in the Tower of the House of Life struck the hour of seven, the other bells began to chime as they had done every day at this hour for I know not how many years. Very likely in the Library, where we still keep a great collection of perfectly useless books, there is preserved some History which may speak of these Bells, and of the builders of the House. When these chimes began, the swifts and jackdaws which live in the Tower began to fly about with a great show of hurry, as if there was barely time for supper, though, as it was yet only the month of July, the sun would not be setting for an hour or more.
We have long since ceased to preach to the people, otherwise we might make them learn a great deal from
