her? Therefore it is that I ask myself, George
Vendale, and I ask you, where is he? What
has become of him?"

"Who can tell!"

"I must try to find out who can tell. I must
institute inquiries. I must never desist from
prosecuting inquiries. I will live upon the
interest of my share—I ought to say his share—in
this business, and will lay up the rest for him.
When I find him, I may perhaps throw myself
upon his generosity; but I will yield up all to
him. I will, I swear. As I loved and honoured
her," said Wilding, reverently kissing his hand
towards the picture, and then covering his eyes
with it. "As I loved and honoured her, and
have a world of reasons to be grateful to her!"
And so broke down again.

His partner rose from the chair he had
occupied, and stood beside him with a hand softly
laid upon his shoulder. "Walter, I knew you
before to-day to be an upright man, with a pure
conscience and a fine heart. It is very
fortunate for me that I have the privilege to travel
on in life so near to so trustworthy a man.
I am thankful for it. Use me as your right
hand, and rely upon me to the death. Don't
think the worse of me if I protest to you
that my uppermost feeling at present is a
confused, you may call it an unreasonable, one. I
feel far more pity for the lady and for you, because
you did not stand in your supposed relations,
than I can feel for the unknown man (if he ever
became a man), because he was unconsciously
displaced. You have done well in sending for
Mr. Bintrey. What I think will be a part of his
advice, I know is the whole of mine. Do not
move a step in this serious matter precipitately.
The secret must be kept among us with great
strictness, for to part with it lightly would be
to invite fraudulent claims, to encourage a host
of knaves, to let loose a flood of perjury and
plotting. I have no more to say now, Walter,
than to remind you that you sold me a share in
your business, expressly to save yourself from
more work than your present health is fit for,
and that I bought it expressly to do work, and
mean to do it."

With these words, and a parting grip of his
partner's shoulder that gave them the best
emphasis they could have had, George Vendale
betook himself presently to the counting-house,
and presently afterwards to the address of M.
Jules Obenreizer.

As he turned into Soho-square, and directed
his steps towards its north side, a deepened
colour shot across his sun-browned face, which
Wilding, if he had been a better observer, or
had been less occupied with his own trouble,
might have noticed when his partner read aloud
a certain passage in their Swiss correspondent's
letter, which he had not read so distinctly as
the rest.

A curious colony of mountaineers has long
been enclosed within that small flat London
district of Soho. Swiss watchmakers, Swiss
silver-chasers, Swiss jewellers, Swiss importers
of Swiss musical boxes and Swiss toys of various
kinds, draw close together there. Swiss professors
of music, painting, and languages; Swiss
artificers in steady work; Swiss couriers, and
other Swiss servants chronically out of place;
industrious Swiss laundresses and clear-starchers;
mysteriously existing Swiss of both sexes; Swiss,
creditable and Swiss discreditable; Swiss to be
trusted by all means, and Swiss to be trusted by no
means; these diverse Swiss particles are attracted
to a centre in the district of Soho. Shabby
Swiss eating-houses, coffee-houses, and lodging,
houses, Swiss drinks and dishes, Swiss service
for Sundays, and Swiss schools for week-days,
are all to be found there. Even the native-
born English taverns drive a sort of broken-
English trade; announcing in their windows
Swiss whets and drams, and sheltering in their
bars Swiss skirmishes of love and animosity on
most nights in the year.

When the new partner in Wilding and
Co. rang the bell of a door bearing the blunt
inscription OBENREIZER on a brass plate—the
inner door of a substantial house, whose ground
story was devoted to the sale of Swiss clocks—
he passed at once into domestic Switzerland.
A white-tiled stove for winter-time filled the
fireplace of the room into which he was shown,
the room's bare floor was laid together in a neat
pattern of several ordinary woods, the room had a
prevalent air of surface bareness and much scrubbing;
and the little square of flowery carpet by
the sofa, and the velvet chimney-board with its
capacious clock and vases of artificial flowers,
contended with that tone, as if, in bringing out
the whole effect, a Parisian had adapted a dairy
to domestic purposes.

Mimic water was dropping off a mill-wheel
under the clock. The visitor had not stood
before it, following it with his eyes, a minute,
when M. Obenreizer, at his elbow, startled him
by saying, in very good English, very slightly
clipped: "How do you do? So glad!"

"I beg your pardon. I didn't hear you come
in."

"Not at all! Sit, please."

Releasing his visitor's two arms, which he
had lightly pinioned at the elbows by way of
embrace, M. Obenreizer also sat, remarking,
with a smile: "You are well? So glad!" and
touching his elbows again.

"I don't know," said Vendale, after exchange
of salutations, "whether you may yet have heard
of me from your House at Neuchâtel?"

"Ah, yes!"

"In connexion with Wilding and Co.?"

"Ah, surely!"

"Is it not odd that I should come to you, in
London here, as one of the Firm of Wilding and
Co., to pay the Firm's respects?"

"Not at all! What did I always observe
when we were on the mountains? We call them
vast; but the world is so little. So little is the
world, that one cannot keep away from persons.
There are so few persons in the world, that they
continually cross and re-cross. So very little
is the world, that one cannot get rid of a
person. Not," touching his elbows again, with an
ingratiatory smile, "that one would desire to
get rid of you."