With a shrug of the shoulders he turned towards the staircase.

"There is no reason," he remarked, carelessly enough, "why I should
inflict the humiliation of my presence on you or on your friends. I am
going down to the Island. You shall entertain your friends and play the
host to your heart's content. It will be more comfortable for both of
us."

Cecil prided himself upon a certain impassivity of features and manner
which some fin de siecle oracle of the cities had pronounced good form,
but he was not wholly able to conceal his relief. Such an arrangement
was entirely to his liking. It solved the situation satisfactorily in
more ways than one.

"It's a thundering good idea, Andrew, if you're sure you'll be
comfortable there," he declared. "I don't believe you would get on with
my friends a bit. They're not your sort. Seems like turning you out of
your own house, though."

"It is of no consequence," Andrew said coldly. "I shall be perfectly
comfortable."

"You see," Cecil continued, "they're not keen on sport at all, and you
don't play bridge--"

Andrew had already disappeared. Cecil turned back into the hall and lit
a cigarette.

"Phew! What a relief!" he muttered to himself. "If only he has the
sense to keep away all the time!"

He rang the bell, which was answered by a butler newly imported from
town.

"Clear away all this mess, James," Cecil ordered, pointing in disgust
to the wet places upon the floor, and the still dripping southwester,
"and serve tea here in an hour, or directly my friends arrive--tea, and
whisky and soda, and liqueurs, you know, with sandwiches and things."

"I will do my best, sir," the man answered. "The kitchen arrangements
are a little--behind the times, if I might venture to say so."

"I know, I know," Cecil answered irritably. "The place has been allowed
to go on anyhow while I was away. Do what you can, and let them know
outside that they must make room for one, or perhaps two
automobiles...."

Upstairs Andrew was rapidly throwing a few things together. With an odd
little laugh he threw into the bottom of a wardrobe an unopened parcel
of new clothes and a dress suit which had been carefully brushed. In
less than twenty minutes he had left the house by the back way, with a
small portmanteau poised easily upon his massive shoulders. As he
turned from the long ill-kept avenue, with its straggling wind-smitten
trees all exposed to the tearing ocean gales, into the high road