oice--"that, sir, is the great Liar's everlasting lie--and you know it!"

Glory was between them with uplifted hands. "Peace, peace! Blessed is the
peacemaker! But tea! Will nobody take more tea? Oh, dear! oh, dear! Why
can't we have tea over again?"

"I know what you mean, sir," said Drake. "You mean that I have brought
Glory back to a life of danger and vanity, and sloth and sensuality. Very
well. I deny your definition. But call it what you will, I have brought
her back to the only life her talents are fit for, and if that's all----"

"Would you have done the same for your own sister?"

"How dare you introduce my sister's name in this connection?"

"And how dare you resent it? What's good for one woman is good for
another."

Glory was turning aside, and Drake was looking ashamed. "Of
course--naturally--all I meant," he faltered--"if a girl has to earn her
living, whatever her talents, her genius--that is one thing. But the
upper classes, I mean the leisured classes----"

"Damn the leisured classes, sir!" said John, and in the silence that
followed the men looked round, but Glory was gone from the room.

Lord Robert, who had been whistling at the window, said to Drake in a
cynical undertone: "The man is hipped and sore. He has lost his
challenge, and we ought to make allowances for him, don't you know."

Drake tried to laugh. "I'm willing to make allowances," he said lightly;
"but when a man talks to me as if--as if I meant to----" but the light
tone broke down, and he faced round upon John and burst out passionately:
"What right have you to talk to me like this? What is there in my
character, in my life, that justifies it? What woman's honour have I
betrayed? What have I done that is unworthy of the character of an
English gentleman?"

John took a stride forward and came face to face and eye to eye with him.
"What have you done?" he said. "You have used a woman as your decoy to
win your challenge, as you say, and you have struck me in the face with
the hand of the woman I love! That's what you've done, sir, and if it's
worthy of the character of an English gentleman, then God help England!"

Drake put his hand to his head and his flushed face turned pale. But Lord
Robert Ure stepped forward and said with a smile: "Well, and if you've
lost your church so much the better. You are only an outsider in the
ecclesiastical stud anyway. Who wants you? Your rector doesn't want you;
your Bishop doesn't want you. Nob