val of the
exhilaration he had felt on Lady Henry's staircase, enjoying, after his
five years in Teheran, after his long homeward journey by desert and
sea, even the common trivialities of the scene--the lights, the gilding,
the sparkle of jewels, the scarlet of the uniforms, the noise and
movement of the well-dressed crowd. Then, after this first physical
thrill, began the second stage of pleasure--the recognitions and the
greetings, after long absence, which show a man where he stands in the
great world, which sum up his past and forecast his future. Sir Wilfrid
had no reason to complain. Cabinet ministers and great ladies, members
of Parliament and the permanent officials who govern but do not rule,
soldiers, journalists, barristers--were all glad, it seemed, to grasp
him by the hand. He had returned with a record of difficult service
brilliantly done, and the English world rewarded him in its
accustomed ways.

It was towards one o'clock that he found himself in a crowd pressing
towards the staircase in the wake of some departing royalties. A tall
man in front turned round to look for some ladies behind him from whom
he had been separated in the crush. Sir Wilfrid recognized old Lord
Lackington, the veteran of marvellous youth, painter, poet, and sailor,
who as a gay naval lieutenant had entertained Byron in the AEgean; whose
fame as one of the raciest of naval reformers was in all the newspapers;
whose personality was still, at seventy-five, charming to most women and
challenging to most men.

As the old man turned, he was still smiling, as though in unison with
something which had just been said to him; and his black eyes under his
singularly white hair searched the crowd with the animation of a lad of
twenty. Through the energy of his aspect the flame of life still
burned, as the evening sun through a fine sky. The face had a faulty yet
most arresting brilliance. The mouth was disagreeable, the chin common.
But the general effect was still magnificent.

Sir Wilfrid started. He recalled the drawing-room in Bruton Street; the
form and face of Mademoiselle Le Breton; the sentences by which Lady
Henry had tried to put him on the track. His mind ran over past years,
and pieced together the recollections of a long-past scandal. "Of
course! _Of course!_" he said to himself, not without excitement. "She
is not like her mother, but she has all the typical points of her
mother's race."

II

It was a cold, clear m