A Frenchman was walking along the path before his bench with a walking-stick; he had found a bit of slate in the way, and with his cane he flipped it along a few feet, then stopped, and flipped it on to the grass; went upon the turf and flipped it back into the path. Then he sent it forward, past Jingles on his bench, and so on as far as Cumberland Gate, where the young man lost sight of Monsieur, and was unable to see whether he continued to drive the scrap of slate before him up Oxford Street in the direction of his haunts in Leicester Square, or whether he left it under the arch.
Till the Frenchman had disappeared, Giles Saltren did not begin to consider his own trouble. He could not do so till the bit of slate was gone beyond his range, with Monsieur after it. Watching the man was a sensible relief to him. When one has run, a pause allows the recovery of breath, and abates the pulsations, so did this diversion of attention serve to relieve Jingles, to lull the agony of remorse, and enable his mind to regain something of evenness and tone.
When a man has been struck on the head by a hammer, he falls. Jingles had received three stunning blows, and recovery could not be immediate. His sanguine hopes of living by his pen had been upset, and that was a blow to his self-esteem. Then his belief in his noble parentage had been knocked over. And lastly he had heard of Lord Lamerton's death—and whether that were accidental or not, he could hardly doubt that he had brought it about, for his lordship would not have left his guests to go to Chillacot, had he not been impelled to do so by learning of the elopement.
There are moments in the lives of most of us when we come on new scenes that are epoch-making in our life's-history. I shall never forget as such my first view of Mont Blanc, from the Col de Balme, and of a portion of the
