"Private," and, depositing his canvas upon the floor, treated his
friend to a prolonged handshaking.

"My dear Dick!" said Rainham, "this is a pleasant surprise. I had
not the remotest notion you were here."

"I thought you were at Bordighera, till Bullen told me of your
arrival ten minutes ago," said Lightmark, with a frank laugh. "And
how well----"

Rainham held up his hand--a very white, nervous hand with one ring
of quaint pattern on the forefinger--deprecatingly.

"My dear fellow, I know exactly what you are going to say. Don't be
conventional--don't say it. I have a fraudulent countenance if I do
look well; and I don't, and I am not. I am as bad as I ever was."

"Well, come now, Rainham, at any rate you are no worse."

"Oh, I am no worse!" admitted the dry dock proprietor. "But, then, I
could not afford to be much worse. However, my health is a subject
which palls on me after a time. Tell me about yourself."

He looked up with a smile, in which an onlooker might have detected
a spark of malice, as though Rainham were aware that his suggested
topic was not without attraction to his friend. He was a slight man
of middle height, and of no apparent distinction, and his face with
all its petulant lines of lassitude and ill-health--the wear and
tear of forty years having done with him the work of fifty--struck
one who saw Philip Rainham for the first time by nothing so much as