The one reputation he desired was that of a 'sad dog'-- a terrible man with the ladies.

That was the paradox of his existence.
Eleanor laughed mechanically; then she turned to Lucy.
'Come!' she said in the girl's ear, and as they walked away she half closed her eyes against the sun, and Lucy thought she heard a gasp of fatigue.

But she spoke lightly.
'Dear, foolish, old man! he was telling me how he had gone back to the Hermitage Library at St.Petersburg the other day to read, after thirty years.

And there in a book that had not been taken down since he had used it last he found a leaf of paper and some pencil words scribbled on it by him when he was a youth--"my own darling." "And if I only knew now _vich_ darling!" he said, looking at me and slapping his knee.

"Vich darling"!' Eleanor repeated, laughing extravagantly.