Chapter I

Jack Burnham was quite determined not to marry Mrs Lorton, and if there was one thing in the world upon which she had rigidly set her heart it was upon refusing him. There were several things about her which he deliberately disliked. In the first place, she was a widow, and he always had an uneasy suspicion that widows, like dynamite, were mysteriously dangerous. Then her Christian name was Harriet, and she never took afternoon tea. The former of these two facts indicated, according to his ideas, that her parents were people of bad taste, the latter that she possessed notions that were against nature. Also, she was well informed, and knew it. This condition of the mind, he considered, should be the blessed birthright of the male sex, and he looked upon her as an usurper. She didn't wear mourning, which implied that she was forgetful--of dead husbands. Then--well, that was about all he had against her, and it was quite enough.

As for her, the whole nature of her protested eloquently against the way he waxed his moustache, against the colour of his brown hair, and of his brown boots, against his lounging gait, and his opinion of Mr Gladstone. He had a certain arrogance about him, when with her, which arose in truth from his fear of her intellectual prowess. This led her to dub him intolerably conceited. She desired to humble him, and considered that she could best do so by refusing his offer of marriage. But she must first persuade him to propose. That was the difficulty.

They were constantly meeting in London. You always constantly meet your enemies in London. And, when they met, they always devoted a great deal of time to the advancement of the tacit and polite quarrel between them. They argued with one another in Hyde Park on fine mornings, and were really disgusted with one another at dinner parties and "At Homes." He thought her fast--at balls; and she had once considered him blatant--at a Marlborough House garden party. This last fact, indeed, put the coping stone to the feud between them, for Mrs Lorton expressed her opinion to a friend, and Burnham, of course, got to know of it. To be thought blatant at Marlborough House was really intolerable. One might as well be pronounced to have had a heathen air at Lambeth Palace.

Distinctly, Jack Burnham and Harriet Lorton were acutely antagonistic.

Yet, there must surely have been some strange, unknown link of sympathy between them, for they both caught the influenza on the same day--it was a Sunday morning--and both permitted it to develop into double pneumonia.

After all, spar as we may, are we not all brothers and sisters?

The double pneumonia ought to have drawn them together; but, as he lived in Piccadilly and she in Queen's Gate, and each was thoroughly self-centred--nothing produces egoism so certainly as influenza--neither knew of the illness of the other.

Providence denied to both that subtle joy, and they got to the mutton chop and chipped potato stage of convalescence in childlike ignorance of each other's misfortune.

There must certainly have been a curious community of mind between them, for both their doctors ordered them to Margate, and they both took rooms at Westgate. Now a similar taste in seaside places is undoubtedly an excellent foundation for eternal friendship. Let the world crumble in atoms, two people who both like Westgate will still find something to talk about amid the confusion occasioned by the dissolution of kingdoms.

Jack Burnham arrived at the St Mildred's Hotel on a Thursday, with his man.

Harriet Lorton came on the following Friday, with her maid.

Neither had any notion of the other's proceedings until they met back to back, as you shall presently hear.