his friends; Leroy's popularity was never more apparent than in a gathering of this sort, composed exclusively of his own sex.

"So, have just come up from Barminster," said Shelton presently, "How is the Castle looking?"

Adrien, busily satisfying a vigorous appetite, merely nodded and smiled in reply; but Jasper Vermont answered for him.

"Beautiful!" he said, with a smile which showed his white, even teeth. "Beautiful! It's a charming view; but we saw little of it this visit. Ah, Shelton, you are really an epicure! We don't get clear turtle like this at the Pallodeon--eh, Adrien?"

"No," replied the young man, looking up. "We ought to have Shelton on the committee. No wonder they love you here, Shelton! And so the colt has lost the steeplechase? I saw the news as I came along."

"And you have lost, how much--two thousand?" queried Parselle.

"Five," said Vermont, not quickly, but just before Adrien could speak.

"Is it five?" asked Leroy indifferently. "I thought I'd backed 'Venus' for more."

"I backed her myself for a couple of hundred," put in Lord Standon ruefully. "She's a beautiful creature, though, and I'd like to buy her."

"You can have her, my dear Stan, for a mere song," said Leroy cordially.

"I'm afraid that's impossible," interposed Jasper with suavity. "She's sold."

Adrien looked up in surprise.

"Sold! To whom?" he asked.

"To the knacker," was the calm reply. "Don't you remember, Adrien, that she threw Fording and broke her leg over the last hurdle?"

Leroy's race resumed its usual air of bored indifference.

"Ah, yes, so you told me. My dear Stan, I'm awfully sorry! I had completely forgotten." He looked round the table. "Any of you seen the papers?" he inquired. "Last night was the first of the new comedy at the Casket--how did it go?"

Frank Parselle laughed. "I was there," he admitted. "Ada played finely, but they hissed once or twice."

"Lost on my horse and on my new play. That is bad luck!" exclaimed Adrien, looking, however, very little disturbed by the news. "It must be withdrawn."

"Certainly," agreed Vermont amiably. "Certainly."

"By Jove! what did you tell me the mounting cost?" asked Parselle, addressing Vermont, but glancing significantly at the others.

"Three thousand pounds," answered Vermont glibly, while Adrien ate his fish with the most consummate indifference.

"Three thousand for four nights, that's about it. The public ought to be grateful to you," said Shelton with a tinge of sarcasm in his voice, as he nodded across at Leroy.

Adrien laughed.

"Or I to them," he said cheerfully. "It's no light thing to sit through a bad play. But how is that, Jasper? You said it would run."

"I?" protested Vermont, with a pleasant smile. "No, Adrien, not so certainly as that. I said I thought the play well written, and that in my opinion it ought to run well--a very different thing. Eh, Shelton?"

"Ah!" replied Shelton, who had been watching him keenly. "So you were out in your reckoning for once. It is to be hoped you didn't make the same mistake with the colt. I think you were also favourably inclined to that, weren't you?"

"Yes," admitted Vermont, leaning back with an admirable air of content. "I laid my usual little bet, and lost--of course."

"You should have hedged," said Shelton, who knew as a positive fact that Vermont had done so.

"I have no judgement," Vermont responded deprecatingly. "I am a man of no ideas, and I admit it. Now Adrien is all acuteness; without him I should soon go astray. I am supposed to look after his interests; but, by Jove! it is he who supplies the brains and I the hands. I am the machine--a mere machine, and he turns the handle!" He laughed gently at his own joke, and held up his glass for replenishment.

"A pretty division of labour," commented Shelton, with a faint sneer. "Now we give you the credit for all the tact and business capacity."

"Ah, what a mistake!" replied Vermont, spreading out his fat hands with a gesture of amusement. "Well, since you give me credit, I will assume the virtue, though I have it not."

He changed the subject adroitly to one of general interest; and as the wine came and disappeared with greater rapidity, the talk ran on with more wit and laughter, Vermont always handling the ball of conversation deftly, and giving it an additional fillip when it seemed to slacken. Adrien Leroy spoke little; though when he did make a remark, the rest listened with an evident desire to hear his opinion.

At length Vermont rose, with a lazy look round.

"Well, I must be off," he said smoothly. "Good-night, Adrien. I shall be with you to-morrow at twelve."

Having bade the rest of the company a hasty adieu, he turned once more to his host.

"Good-night, Shelton," he said smilingly. "Thanks for the excellent dinner. Rome would not have perished had you lived with the last of CÊsars."

"And Adrien Leroy would not go to the dogs so quickly, if you did not show him the way," murmured Shelton inaudibly, as Vermont departed, with the bland smile still hovering round his thin lips.

Outside the club door, Vermont's motor was drawn up at the side waiting for him. He looked at his watch, and was surprised at the lateness of the hour. Stepping hastily into the vehicle, he held up two fingers to the chauffeur, who apparently needed no other instructions; for the car glided off, and Vermont, as he passed the club, looked up at the windows with an ugly smile.

As Lord Standon had said, few knew his origin or his business; but, in reality, his antecedents were of a very ordinary nature. He was the son of a solicitor who had lived with but one object in his sordid life, namely, the desire to make his son a man of position with the power to mix as an equal among that portion of society which only came to Malcolm Vermont when it wanted its scandals glossed over, or to obtain money. Ill-natured people were apt to hint that he had amassed his wealth by means of usury and the taking up of shady cases. At any rate, he made sufficient to bring up his son in luxury and send him to Oxford, where Jasper had first come in contact with Adrien Leroy. At the death of his father, Vermont found himself possessed of an income of a thousand a year, which enabled him to become a member of Adrien's set, notwithstanding that the amount was a much smaller one than he had been led to expect, and, in his opinion, savoured almost of aristocratic poverty.

The car had rolled silently into a side street off St. James's, where the chauffeur pulled up sharply at the door of one of the old-fashioned, though now newly-painted houses. Vermont sprang out and rang the bell twice.

"Has Miss Lester returned yet?" he asked of the smart maid who opened the door.

"Yes, sir," she answered, and promptly led the way up a newly-carpeted staircase, redolent of Parma violet scent and glistening with white enamelled woodwork and plaster casts. The walls were adorned with pictures in the worst possible taste and the most glaring colours. As Vermont reached the first floor, a strong, savoury odour filled the air.

He smiled sarcastically, and sniffed as if the perfume were familiar to him.

"Miss Lester at supper?" he asked the white-capped maid, as she threw open the door on the first floor, and stood aside to let the visitor precede her.

"Yes, sir; supper's been served," was the demure answer.

Vermont passed into the room, which was furnished with the same lack of taste as the staircase. Two women were seated at the table, apparently just finishing their supper.

At first glance they might have been mistaken for mother and daughter, as the elder woman was clad in a sombre black velvet dress, and had a pale, thin face, crowned with heavy masses of grey hair. On closer inspection, however, one perceived that Julia Lester was far from