The Twelfth Hour

an-addressing envelopes and filling in invitation cards. The cards stated with tedious repetition that Miss Crofton and Sir James Crofton

ed at him. She held up to show him some wonderful mauve and blue hyacinths that she carried, and then passed on. Woodville sighed. It was too symbolic. The scent lingered. Like a half-remembered melody, it seemed to have the insidious power of recalling something in the past that was too wonderful

dville, fi

but I can go on later

ising. He did not look like a man who would be supple

anges of mood that would nowadays be called neurotic or highly strung, but was in his young days merely put down as bad temper. He had a high estimation of his mental powers, and a poor opinion of those who did not share this estimation. He took a special pride in his insight into character, and in that instinctive penetration that is said to enable its fortunate possessor to see as far throu

Presently I want you to take notes of a speech I intend making in the Hous

etic, and restraining his inclination to say that he had not expe

fresh in your mind. I can easily re

ts about nothing whatever, and then said, "Sent a card to Roy Beaumont, the young inv

ago, and was still going on. He is qui

t. He's a young man w

n-holes, and is thinking of training a cr

James judicially. "If practicab

some new way of not posti

hing, Woodville, but I never make a mistake! By the way, I should like to send a card to the Leader of the Opposition and his wife.

ng a note, and remembering that it is as impossible nowada

r, accurately placed all the tips of his fingers together, and slowly blinked his eyes. He did not mean any harm by this. In fact, he meant nothing. His gestures and

hange of address," said Woodville, glancing sw

'll send her. Don't mov

Sometimes he thought his life was like a closed door. Yet, perhaps, there might be some one on the other side o

e-Jones. He had the unmistakable public-school and University hall-mark, and if he had been fairly liked at Eton, at Oxford, where (as Mr. Max Beerbohm so rightly says) the nonsense knocked out of one at school is carefully and painlessly put back, Woodville was really popular, and considered remarkably clever, capable of enjoying, and even of conceiving, Ideas. Detesting the ready-made cheap romantic, and yet in vague search of the unusual,

haved like a guardian in an old-fashioned farce. Instead of making his wife his housekeeper, as most men do, he made his housekeeper his wife. She was a

an that absurdly improbable things are quite as li

be extravagant because he had never made large debts, his ideas of the ordinary necessities of life were not conspicuously moderate, including, as they did, horses, hospitality, travel, Ar

nd charm for whom he had shown indulgent affection for twenty-two years, was one of those mysteries that seem unsolvable in elderly gentlemen in general and in wicked uncles in particular. Sir

ly endeavour to avoid spending sixpence; no easy task to a man whose head was always in the clouds and his hand always in his pocket

into diplomacy. Nothing could be less to his taste than the post of shorthandwriter to a long-winded old gentleman, to writing out speeches that in all probability would never be made, and copying pamphlets that woul

prices (amazingly low, I mean) to a few people who honestly preferred them to the originals on the undeniable grounds that they were at once cleaner and less costly. He was ambitious and knew he had brains and energy, besides being rather unusually well-turned-out in t

found by the persevering reader to be