e darkly visible on the
dull blue walls. The famous mantelpiece inlaid with uncut turquoise was
also within sight; and the sideboard with its load of Sevres china and
gold dishes. Reckage took great pride in these possessions, but it
shocked his sense of dignity to see them thus exposed to the vulgar
gaze.

He let himself into the mansion with a latchkey, stormed at the servants
for their carelessness, and made what is commonly known as a scene.

Then he crossed the hall, and went into another fine room, which led by
steps into a garden, and caught the sunset.

Here, standing by the window with his back to the door, looking at the
clouds, greyer than a gull's wing, which fled like driven souls across
the sky, stood Orange.

He turned as the latch moved, and Reckage, coming in, perceived the pale
face, resolute, a little proud, and thoroughly inscrutable of his former
secretary. Of fine height and broad-shouldered, Robert bore himself with
peculiar firmness and ease. His brown eyes, with their brilliant,
defiant glance, his close, dark beard, and powerful aquiline features;
the entire absence of vanity, or the desire to produce an impression
which showed itself in every line of his face and every movement of his
body, indicated a type of individual more likely to attract the
confidence of men than the sentimentality of women.

The two young men greeted each other pleasantly, but with a certain
reserve on each side.

"So you are here!" said Reckage, seating himself. "I am sorry to be
late. The fact is I caught sight of old Garrow and Sara de Treverell
driving together in the Park, and it suddenly occurred to me to ask 'em
to dine with us to-night. I raced after their brougham, but my brute of
a horse--Pluto: you know the beast--gave me such a lot of trouble that I
couldn't speak to them. How are you? You don't look very fit. Perhaps
you are glad that we are alone. But Sara is a nice girl, and full of
kindness. She's a good friend, too--just the friend for your wife. I
thought of that."

Robert resumed his post at the window, and studied the heavens. But if
he sought for any answer to the many impassioned questions which were
thronging his heart and mind at that moment, he looked in vain. For
himself the struggles of the last year had been to a great degree
subconscious. He had been like a sick man who, ignorant of the real
gravity of his condition, fights death daily without a thought of the
unequal strife, or th