l to the job, to give this
fellow a lesson."

"He did it all right," Lady Cynthia murmured.

"But this is where I think I re-establish myself," Sir Timothy
continued, the peculiar nature of his smile reasserting itself. "I did
not do this for the sake of the neighbourhood. I did not do it from any
sense of justice at all. I did it to provide for myself an enjoyable and
delectable spectacle."

She smiled lazily.

"That does rather let you out," she admitted. "However, on the whole I
am disappointed. I am afraid that you are not so bad as people think."

"People?" he repeated. "Francis Ledsam, for instance--my son-in-law in
posse?"

"Francis Ledsam is one of those few rather brilliant persons who have
contrived to keep sane without becoming a prig," she remarked.

"You know why?" he reminded her. "Francis Ledsam has been a tremendous
worker. It is work which keeps a man sane. Brilliancy without the
capacity for work drives people to the madhouse."

"Where we are all going, I suppose," she sighed.

"Not you," he answered. "You have just enough--I don't know what we
moderns call it--soul, shall I say?--to keep you from the muddy ways."

She rose to her feet and leaned over the rails. Sir Timothy watched her
thoughtfully. Her figure, notwithstanding its suggestions of delicate
maturity, was still as slim as a young girl's. She was looking across
the tree-tops towards an angry bank of clouds--long, pencil-like streaks
of black on a purple background. Below, in the street, a taxi passed
with grinding of brakes and noisy horn. The rail against which she
leaned looked very flimsy. Sir Timothy stretched out his hand and held
her arm.

"My nerves are going with my old age," he apologised. "That support
seems too fragile."

She did not move. The touch of his fingers grew firmer.

"We have entered upon an allegory," she murmured. "You are preserving me
from the depths."

He laughed harshly.

"I!" he exclaimed, with a sudden touch of real and fierce bitterness
which brought the light dancing into her eyes and a spot of colour to
her cheeks. "I preserve you! Why, you can never hear my name without
thinking of sin, of crime of some sort! Do you seriously expect me to
ever preserve any one from anything?"

"You haven't made any very violent attempts to corrupt me," she reminded
him.

"Women don't enter much into my scheme of life," he declared. "They
played a great part once. It was a woman, I think, who first hea