eighteen thousand pounds."

"Dear me!" his companion sighed. "It seems quite a great deal of money."

"Since we are upon the subject," the lawyer proceeded, "my firm has suggested that I should approach your lordship with regard to some means of—pardon me—reducing the liability in question."

So far as the face of Mr. Wadham's client was capable of expressing anything, it expressed now a certain amount of surprise.

"It appears to me, Mr. Wadham," he remarked, "that you are asking me to attend to your business for you."

The lawyer knitted his brows in puzzled fashion.

"I am not sure that I quite follow your lordship," he murmured.

"Do I employ you," his patron continued, "to manage my estates, to control my finances, to act as agent to all my properties, and yet need to keep a perspective myself of my various assets? If eighteen thousand pounds is required, it is for your firm to decide from what quarter the money should come. Personally, as you know, I never interfere."

Mr. Wadham coughed in somewhat embarrassed fashion.

"As a matter of fact, your lordship," he confessed, with a most illogical sense that it was his duty to apologise for his client's impecuniosity, "as a matter of fact, neither my partners nor I can at the present moment see where a sum of eighteen thousand pounds can be raised."

The Marquis rose to his feet and shook the cigarette ash carefully from his coat.

"Our conversation, Mr. Wadham," he said, "is reaching a stage which bores me. I have just remembered, too," he added, with a glance at the clock, "that my daughter is entertaining a few friends to lunch. You must write to Merridrew. He is really a most excellent agent. He will tell you what balances are likely to be available during the next few months."

Mr. Wadham received the suggestion without enthusiasm.

"We made an application to Mr. Merridrew some few weeks ago," he remarked, "as we needed some ready money for the purpose of briefing the barristers. Mr. Merridrew's reply was not encouraging."

"Ah!" the Marquis murmured. "Merridrew is a gloomy dog sometimes. Try him again. It is astonishing how elastic he can be if he is squeezed."

"I am afraid your lordship has done all the squeezing," the solicitor observed ruefully.

A little trill of feminine laughter rang through the room. Two smartly attired young ladies were seated upon a divan near the door, surrounded by a little group of acquaintances. One of them leaned forward and nodded as the Marquis and his companion passed.

"How do you do, Marquis?" she said, in distinctly transatlantic accents.

The behaviour of his client, under such circumstances, remained an object lesson to Mr. Wadham for the rest of his life. The Marquis gazed with the faintest expression of surprise at, or perhaps through, the young person who had addressed him. Fumbling for a moment in his waistcoat pocket, he raised a horn-rimmed monocle to his eye, dropped it almost at once, and passed on without the flicker of an eyelid. On their way to the outside door, however, he shook his head gravely.

"What a singular exhibition," he murmured,—"demonstration, perhaps I should say—of the crudeness of modern social intercourse! Was it my fancy, Wadham, or did the young person up there address me?"

"She certainly did," the other assented. "She even called you by name."

They were standing in the courtyard now, waiting for a taxi, and the Marquis sighed.

"In a public place, too!" he murmured. "Wadham, I am afraid that we are living in the wrong age. I came to that conclusion only a few days ago, when I was invited, actually invited, to dine at the house of— But I forget, Wadham, I forget. Your grandfather would appreciate these things. You yourself are somewhat imbued, I fear, with the modern taint. A handful of silver, if you please," he added, holding out his hand. "I am not accustomed to these chance conveyances."

The lawyer searched his trousers pockets, and produced a couple of pink notes and a few half-crowns. In some mysterious fashion, the whole seemed to pass into the Marquis's long, aristocratic hand. He turned to the porter who was standing bare-headed, and slipped a ten-shilling note into his palm.

"Well, good morning, Wadham," he said, stepping into his taxicab. "I have no doubt that you did your best, but this morning's unfortunate happening will take me some time to get over. My compliments to your senior partner. You can say that I am disappointed—no more."

The Marquis crossed his legs and leaned back in the vehicle. Mr. Wadham remained upon the pavement, gazing for a moment at his empty hand.

"Taxi, sir?" the hall porter asked obsequiously.

Mr. Wadham felt in all his pockets.

"Thank you," he replied gloomily, "I'll walk."

CHAPTER II

Lady Letitia Thursford, the only unmarried daughter of the Marquis, stood in a corner of the spacious drawing-room at 94 Grosvenor Square, talking to her brother-in-law. Sir Robert, although he wanted his luncheon very badly and, owing to some mistake, had come a quarter of an hour too soon, retained his customary good nature. He always enjoyed talking to his favourite relation-in-law.

"I say, Letty," he remarked, screwing his eyeglass into his eye and looking around, "you're getting pretty shabby here, eh?"

Lady Letitia smiled composedly.

"That is the worst of you nouveaux riches," she declared. "You do not appreciate the harmonising influence of the hand of Time. This isn't shabbiness, it's tone."

"Nouveaux riches, indeed!" he repeated. "Better not let your father hear you call me names!"

"Father wouldn't care a bit," she replied. "As for this drawing-room, Robert, well, sixty years ago it must have been hideous. To-day I rather like it. It is absolutely and entirely Victorian, even to the smell."

Sir Robert sniffed vigorously.

"I follow you," he agreed. "Old lavender perfume, ottomans, high-backed chairs, chintzes that look as though they came out of the ark, and a few mouldy daguerreotypes. The whole thing's here, all right."

"Perhaps it's just as well for us that it is," she observed. "I have come to the conclusion that furniture people are the least trustful in the world. I don't think even dad could get a van-load of furniture on credit."

Sir Robert nodded sympathetically. He was a pleasant-looking man, a little under middle age, with bright, alert expression, black hair and moustache, and perhaps a little too perfectly dressed. He just escaped being called dapper.

"Chucking a bit more away in the Law Courts, isn't he?"

Letitia indulged in a little grimace.

"Not even you could make him see reason about that," she sighed. "He is certain to lose his case, and it must be costing him thousands."

"Dashed annoying thing," Sir Robert remarked meditatively, "to have a cottage within a hundred yards of your hall door which belongs to some one else."

"It is annoying, of course," Letitia assented, "but there is no doubt whatever that Uncle Christopher made it over to the Vonts absolutely, and I don't see how we could possibly upset the deed of gift. I am now," she continued, moving towards a stand of geraniums and beginning to snip off some dead leaves, "about to conclude the picture. You behold the maiden of bygone days who condescended sometimes to make herself useful."

The scissors snipped energetically, and Sir Robert watched his sister-in-law. She was inclined to be tall, remarkably graceful in a fashion of her own, a little pale, with masses of brown hair, and eyes which defied any sort of colour analysis. But what Sir Robert chiefly loved about her were the two little lines of humour at the corners of her firm, womanly mouth.

"Yes, you're in the setting all right, Letty," he declared, "and yet you are rather puzzling. Just now you look as though you only wanted the crinoline and the little