"After the Red Pottage comes the exceeding bities cry" AAREOTEIN NEW YORK AND LONDON HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS RED POTTAGE CHAPTER I In tragic life, God wot, No villain need be! Passions spin the plot: -GEORGE MEREDITH. "I CAN'T get out," said Swift's starling, looking through the bars of his cage. "I will get out," said Hugh Scarlett to himself, seeing no bars, but half conscious of a cage. "I will get out,' he repeated, as his hansom took him swiftly from the house in Portman Square, where he had been dining, towards that other house in Carlton House Terrace, whither his thoughts had travelled on before him, out-distancing the trip-clip-clop, trip-clip-clop of the horse. It was a hot night in June. Hugh had thrown back his overcoat, and the throng of passers-by in the street could see, if they cared to see, "the glass of fashion" in the shape of white waistcoat and shirt front, surmounted by the handsome, irritated face of their owner, leaning back with his hat tilted over his eyes. Trip-clip-clop went the horse. A great deal of thinking may be compressed into a quarter of an hour, especially if it has been long eluded. "I will get out," he said again to himself with an impatient movement. It was beginning to weary him, this commonplace intrigue which had been so new and allur |