"Friends," said he, "my future is decided for me. I thank you deeply,
deeply for your brave friendship--your noble loyalty, but the fiat
has gone forth. To-night I leave the World of Fashion for one better
suited to my birth, for it seems I should be only an amateur
gentleman, as it were, after all. My Lords, your most obedient,
humble servant,--good-by!"
So Barnabas bowed to each in turn and went forth from the scene of
his triumph, deliberate of step and with head carried high as became
a conqueror.
And thus the star of Barnabas Beverley, Esquire, waxed and waned and
vanished utterly from the Fashionable Firmament, and, in time, came
to be regarded as only a comet, after all.
CHAPTER LXIII
WHICH TELLS HOW BARNABAS HEARD THE TICKING OF A CLOCK
It was a dark night, the moon obscured as yet by a wrack of flying
cloud, for a wind was abroad, a rising wind that blew in fitful gusts;
a boisterous, blustering, bullying wind that met the traveller at
sudden corners to choke and buffet him and so was gone, roaring away
among roofs and chimneys, rattling windows and lattices,
extinguishing flickering lamps, and filling the dark with stir and
tumult.
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