ay."

"There's nothing wrong, is there?" she asked him, pleadingly.

"On the contrary," Peter Ruff declared, "everything is right. I have
made friends with Dory, and I have won a thousand pounds. When we leave
here, I am going to look out for that little estate in the country.
If you come out with the lunch, dear, I want you to watch that man
Hamilton's coat. It's exactly what I should like to wear myself at my
own shooting parties. See if you can make a sketch of it when he isn't
looking."

Violet laughed.

"I'll try," she promised.

BOOK TWO

CHAPTER I. RECALLED BY THE DOUBLE-FOUR

It is the desire of Madame that you should join our circle here on
Thursday evening next at ten o'clock.

The man looked up from the sheet of note-paper which he held in his
hand, and gazed through the open French-windows before which he was
standing. It was a very pleasant and very peaceful prospect. There
was his croquet lawn, smooth-shaven, the hoops neatly arranged, the
chalk-mark firm and distinct upon the boundary. Beyond, the tennis
court, the flower gardens, and, to the left, the walled fruit garden.
A little farther away was the paddock and orchard, and a little farther
still, the farm, which for the last four years had been the joy of his
life. His meadows were yellow with buttercups; a thin line of willows
showed where the brook wound its lazy way through the bottom fields. It
was a home, this, in which a man could well lead a peaceful life, could
dream away his days to the music of the west wind, the gurgling stream,
the song of birds, and the low murmuring of insects. Peter Ruff stood
like a man turned to stone, for, even as he looked, these things passed
away from before his eyes, the roar of the world beat in his ears--the
world of intrigue, of crime, the world where the strong man hewed his
way to power, and the weaklings fell like corn before the sickle.

"It is the desire of Madame!"

Peter Ruff clenched his fists as he stood there. It was a message from
a world every memory of which had been deliberately crushed, a world,
indeed, in which he had seemed no longer to hold any place. Scarcely yet
of middle age, well-preserved, upright, with neat figure dressed in the
conventional tweeds and gaiters of an English country gentleman, he
not only had loved his life, but he looked the part. He was Peter Ruff,
Esquire, of Aynesford Manor, in the county of Somerset. It could not be
for him, this strange s