cavalry officer, younger son of a well-known peer, he could draw a cheque for thirty thousand. When he reflected upon his present position, hampered by the two girls dependent upon him, he merely laughed a strange cynical laugh, the same that he had laughed across the roulette-table when he had flung down and lost his last louis.

“What’s your game, burying yourself in this abominable hole?” inquired his whilom partner, presently. “I called at the National Sporting Club as soon as I got to London, expecting to see something of you, but the hall-porter told me that you lived down in this Sleepy-Hollow, and never came to town. So I resolved to run down and look you up.”

“Can’t afford to live in London,” the Captain answered, rolling a cigarette carefully between his fingers, before lighting it.

“Hard up! yet you refuse my offer!” observed Zertho, laughing. “You’re an enigma, Brooker. Money would put you on your legs again, my dear fellow.”

“I don’t doubt it,” the other replied. “But I have reasons.”

Zertho d’Auzac knit his dark brows, glancing at the Captain with a look of quick suspicion.

“You have expectations for Liane—eh?”

No reply escaped Brooker’s lips. He was thinking deeply.

“Any other man wouldn’t make you such an offer,” the other continued, in a tone of contempt.

Instantly there was an angry glint in the Captain’s eyes.

“I tell you, Zertho, I’ll never let my daughter marry you. You, of all men, shall not have her—no, by Heaven! not for a hundred thousand pounds.”

The other’s face darkened in anger. But he turned away, giving vent to a short, harsh laugh, and with feigned good humour advanced towards the window, and whistling softly, took out his cigarette-case, a plain silver one, whereon his coronet and monogram were engraved.

At that moment two graceful, bright-faced girls entered the gate from the road, sauntering leisurely up the path towards the house. Dressed alike in dark well-made skirts, cool-looking blouses of cream crêpon and straw sailor hats with black bands, they walked together, the sound of their laughter ringing through the room. The taller of the pair was Liane Brooker, slim, with infinite grace, a face undeniably beautiful, a pair of clear grey eyes the depths of which seemed unfathomable, nose and mouth that denoted buoyancy of spirits and sincerity of heart, hair dressed neatly in the latest mode, and that easy swing about her carriage peculiar alone to Frenchwomen. Her warmth of Southern blood and large expressive eyes she inherited from her mother, who came from St Tropez in the Var, and her strange cosmopolitan education had already made her a thorough woman of the world. Her character was altogether a curiously complex one. Though fresh, bright and happy, she, the daughter of an adventurer, had seen a good deal of the seamy side of life, where the women were déclassé, and the men rogues and outsiders; yet, in fairness to her father, it must be admitted that, even in his most reckless moments, he had always exerted towards both girls keen solicitude. Her beauty was peerless. Hundreds of men had said so among themselves. Such a face as hers would have made a fortune on the stage; therefore it was little wonder that she should be desired as wife by Prince Zertho d’Auzac, the man who under the plain cognomen of Zertho d’Auzac was once a fellow blackleg with her father, and now a wealthy personage by reason of his inheritance of the great family estates in Luxembourg. Well he knew what a sensation her beauty would create in Berlin or St Petersburg, and with the object of obtaining her he had travelled to England. Pure and good, full of high thoughts and refined feeling, Liane Brooker existed amid strangely incongruous surroundings. She had been reared in the worst atmosphere of vice and temptation to be found in the whole of Europe, yet had passed through unscathed and uncorrupted.

Her companion was fair, with bright pink-and-white complexion, rosy, delicate cheeks, and merry blue eyes. Nelly was scarcely as handsome perhaps as Liane, yet hers was an almost perfect type of English beauty. Her hands were not quite so small or refined as her friend’s, and in contrast with the latter’s carriage hers was not quite so graceful, nor was her figure so supple; yet the mass of fluffy blond curls that peeped beneath her hat, straying across her brow, gave softness to her features, and her delicate pointed chin added a decided piquancy to a face that was uncommonly pretty and winning.

Both girls, catching sight at the same moment of Zertho’s heavy watch-chain at the window, muttered together in an undertone. That day the Prince had arrived unexpectedly to lunch, sat down to their meagre dish of cold mutton, as he had often done in the old days when funds had been low, and having indicated his desire to talk business alone with the Captain, they had gone out together to post a letter at the little grocery store at the opposite end of the village.

When they discovered him still there, both pulled wry faces. He had never been a favourite of either. Liane had always instinctively disliked this man, who was the scapegrace of a noble family. His cynical look and sly manner had caused her to distrust him, and it had been mainly on this account that her father had dissolved his partnership in the private gaming-house they had carried on during the previous winter in Nice, an institution remembered with regret by many a young man who had gone to the Riviera for health and pleasure, only to return ruined. Zertho was not entirely unconscious of Liane’s antipathy towards him; he well knew that without her father’s aid his cause must be foredoomed to failure. But he never on any single occasion acted in undue haste. It was his proud boast that if ever he set his heart upon doing a thing he could quietly possess his soul in patience, for years if necessary, till the right moment arrived when he could execute his plans with success. Judging from the light, pleasant greeting he gave both girls as they entered, it was the tactics of craft and cunning he now intended to follow.

He chaffed Liane upon becoming a village belle, whereupon she, quick at repartee, tossed her handsome head, her heart beating fast, almost tumultuously, as she answered:

“Better that than the old life, M’sieur.”

“Oh, so you, too, have settled and become puritanical!” he laughed. “You English, you are always utterly incomprehensible. Have you yet joined the Anti-Gambling League?”

“We are very happy here,” she replied, heedless of his taunt. “I have no desire to return to the Continent, to that old life of feast one day and fast the next.”

“Nor I,” chimed in Nellie, full of fun and vivacity. “This place is sometimes horribly dull, it’s true; but we always get our dinner, which we didn’t on many occasions when we were abroad. Look at our house! Surely this place, with its little English garden, is better than those dingy rooms on the third floor in the Rue Dalpozzo in Nice. Besides, the Captain never swears now.”

“Very soon he’ll become a teacher in the local Sunday School, I suppose,” sneered Zertho.

“I cannot understand your reason for coming here to jeer at our poverty,” Liane exclaimed angrily, drawing herself up quickly. “At least my father lives honestly.”

“I sincerely beg your pardon, and your father’s also, mademoiselle,” answered the Prince, bowing stiffly in foreign manner. “If my remarks have annoyed you I’m sure I will at once withdraw them with a