Misplaced sympathy is the least available of superfluities, and Bernard at this time found himself thinking that there was a good deal of impertinence in the world.

He would, however, readily have confessed that, in so far as he failed to enjoy his Oriental wanderings, the fault was his own; though he would have made mentally the gratifying reflection that never was a fault less deliberate.

If, during the period of which I speak, his natural gayety had sunk to a minor key, a partial explanation may be found in the fact that he was deprived of the society of his late companion.

It was an odd circumstance that the two young men had not met since Gordon's abrupt departure from Baden.

Gordon went to Berlin, and shortly afterward to America, so that they were on opposite sides of the globe.