He stepped into the carriage with a farewell bow, and it drove off at once. Wolfenden remained looking after it, with his hat in his hand. From the Embankment below came the faint sound of hurrying footsteps.

CHAPTER III

THE WARNING OF FELIX

The three friends stood upon the pavement watching the little brougham until it disappeared round the corner in a flickering glitter of light. It would have been in accordance with precedent if after leaving the restaurant they had gone to some one of their clubs to smoke a cigar and drink whisky and apollinaris, while Harcutt retailed the latest society gossip, and Densham descanted on art, and Wolfenden contributed genial remarks upon things in general. But to-night all three were inclined to depart from precedent. Perhaps the surprising incident which they had just witnessed made anything like normal routine seem unattractive; whatever the reason may have been, the young men were of a sudden not in sympathy with one another. Harcutt murmured some conventional lie about having an engagement, supplemented it with some quite unconvincing statement about pressure of work, and concluded with an obviously disingenuous protest against the tyranny of the profession of journalism, then he sprang with alacrity into a hansom and said goodbye with a good deal less than his usual cordiality. Densham, too, hailed a cab, and leaning over the apron delivered himself of a farewell speech which sounded rather malignant. “You are a lucky beast, Wolfenden,” he growled enviously, adding, with a note of venom in his voice, “but don’t forget it takes more than the first game to win the rubber,” and then he was whirled away, nodding his head and wearing an expression of wisdom deeply tinged with gloom.

Wolfenden was surprised, but not exactly sorry that the first vague expression of hostility had been made by the others.

“Both of them must be confoundedly hard hit,” he murmured to himself; “I never knew Densham turn nasty before.” And to his coachman he said aloud, “You may go home, Dawson. I am going to walk.”

He turned on to the embankment, conscious of a curious sense of exhilaration. He was no blasé cynic; but the uniformly easy life tends to become just a trifle monotonous, and Lord Wolfenden’s somewhat epicurean mind derived actual pleasure from the subtle luxury of a new sensation. What he had said of his friends he could have said with equal truth of himself: he was confoundedly hard hit. For the first time in his life he found the mere memory of a woman thrilling; his whole nature vibrated in response to the appeal she made to him, and he walked along buoyantly under the stars, revelling in the delight of being alive.

Suddenly he stopped abruptly. Huddled up in the corner of a seat was a man with a cloth cap pulled forward screening his face: at that moment Lord Wolfenden was in a mood to be extravagantly generous to any poor applicant for alms, lavishly sympathetic to any tale of distress. But it was not ordinary curiosity that arrested his progress now. He knew almost at the first glance who it was that sat in this dejected attitude, although the opera hat was replaced by the soft cloth cap, and in other details the man’s appearance was altered. It was indeed the Mr. Felix who had supped with him at the “Milan” and subsequently behaved in so astonishing a fashion.

He knew that he was recognised, and sat up, looking steadfastly at Wolfenden, although his lips trembled and his eyes gleamed wildly. Across his temples a bright red mark was scored.

Lord Wolfenden broke the silence.

“You’re a nice sort of fellow to ask out to supper! What in the name of all that’s wonderful were you trying to do?”

“I should have thought it was sufficiently obvious,” the man replied bitterly. “I tried to kill him, and I failed. Well, why don’t you call the police? I am quite ready. I shall not run again.”

Wolfenden hesitated, and then sat down by the side of this surprising individual.

“The man you went for didn’t seem to care, so I don’t see why I should. But why do you want to kill him?”

“To keep a vow,” the other answered; “how and why made I will not tell you.”

“How did you escape?” Wolfenden asked abruptly.

“Probably because I didn’t care whether I escaped or not,” Felix replied, with a short, bitter laugh. “I stood behind some shrubs just inside the garden, and watched the hunt go by. Then I came out here and sat down.”

“It all sounds very simple,” said Wolfenden, a trifle sarcastically. “May I ask what you are going to do next?”

Felix’s face so clearly intimated that he might not ask anything of the kind, or that if he did his curiosity would not be satisfied, that Wolfenden felt compelled to make some apology.

“Forgive me if I seem inquisitive, but I find the situation a little unusual. You were my guest, you see, and had it not been for my chance invitation you might not have met that man at all. Then again, had it not been for my interference he would have been dead now and you would have been in a fair way to be hanged.”

Felix evinced no sign of gratitude for Wolfenden’s intervention. Instead he said intensely,

“Oh, you fool! you fool!”

“Well, really,” Wolfenden protested, “I don’t see why——” But Felix interrupted him.

“Yes, you are a fool,” he repeated, “because you saved his life. He is an old man now. I wonder how many there have been in the course of his long life who desired to kill him? But no one—not one solitary human being—has ever befriended him or come to his rescue in time of danger without living to be sorry for it. And so it will be with you. You will live to be sorry for what you have done to-night; you will live to think it would have been far better for him to fall by my hand than for yourself to suffer at his. And you will wish passionately that you had let him die. Before heaven, Wolfenden, I swear that that is true.”

The man was so much in earnest, his passion was so quietly intense, that Wolfenden against his will was more than half convinced. He was silent. He suddenly felt cold, and the buoyant elation of mind in which he had started homewards vanished, leaving him anxious and heavy, perhaps just a little afraid.

“I did what any man would do for any one else,” he said, almost apologetically. “It was instinctive. As a matter of fact, that particular man is a perfect stranger to me. I have never seen him before and it is quite possible that I shall never see him again.”

Felix turned quickly towards him.

“If you believe in prayer,” he said, “go down on your knees where you are and pray as you have never prayed for anything before that you may not see him again. There has never been a man or a woman yet who has not been the worse for knowing him. He is like the pestilence that walketh in the darkness, poisoning every one that is in the way of his horrible infection.”

Wolfenden pulled himself together. There was no doubt about his companion’s earnestness, but it was the earnestness of an unbalanced mind. Language so exaggerated as his was out of keeping with the times and the place.

“Tell me some more about him,” he suggested. “Who is he?”

“I won’t tell you,” Felix answered, obstinately.

“Well, then, who is the lady?”

“I don’t know. It is quite enough for me to know that she is his companion for the moment.”

“You do not intend to be communicative, I can see,” said Wolfenden, after a brief pause, “but I