which all
intellectual steel struck fire.

Sir John Dacre and Geoffrey grasped each other's hand with a firm grip,
and looked into each other's eyes in silence for a moment.

"I came down here to see you, Geoffrey, because I need you.

"You know, John, that I am at your service, now and always."

"It is not my service, Geoffrey," said Dacre. "But later for this. Here
comes old Featherstone; we have come down here together. Here, let us
get on the sofa; it is the same one we used to sit on when we came here
in the hunting season in your father's day."

"I did not have a chance to say anything to you while the ladies were
present," said Featherstone, sitting down between his friends. "I am
very glad to see you. I had heard nothing about you since you left
Paris. They tell me that you are living in the neighborhood."

"Yes, just over there," indicated Geoffrey with his thumb. "You are to
stop three days, I hear. You must both come to see me. You will be my
first guests since I came back to my estate."

"You look as well as ever," said Featherstone. "But how we have made the
running the wrong way, to be sure, since I last saw you."

Featherstone made a gesture with his left hand, and looked inquiringly
at his friends; but Geoffrey, though he noticed the gesture, did not
attach any significance to it.

He raised his glass of port over a carafe of water. "The King," he said.

All three drank, and Dacre whispered, "No more of this, Featherstone. I
shall see Geoffrey this evening; he is not one of us yet."

"What an attractive woman Mrs. Oswald Carey is!" exclaimed Featherstone.
"You knew her before, did you not, Geoffrey?"

"I was her father's pupil before I went to Oxford."

"And knew the goddess when she was budding into womanhood. I can see it
all. You fell in love with her, of course, cherished a locket in your
left-hand waistcoat pocket for some weeks after you left her father's
tutelage. I don't blame you. I never saw a woman who made one's blood
course faster."

Featherstone stretched out his long legs and arms and pulled away at his
cigar, a queer smile playing over his mouth.

"She is a woman whom it is delightful to have been or be in love with,"
he continued; "but to marry--ah! I do not envy Oswald Carey. He simply
gives his name up to have a Mrs. put before it. By the way, our hostess
is an interesting girl. I like the old man, too. It is refreshing to see
a man who has opened his oyster after livi