with
the plate in church on Sundays!" he sneered. "My hat! Fancy you, Phil,
turning honest in your old age!"

"I admit that I'm trying to be honest, Arnold--for the girl's sake."

"And, by Jove! if the good people here, in Middleton, knew the truth,
eh--the truth that you----"

"Hush! Somebody may overhear!" cried the other, starting and glancing
apprehensively at the closed door of his cosy study. "What's the use
of discussing the business further? I've told you, once and for all,
Arnold, that I refuse to be a party to any such dastardly
transaction."

"Ho! ho!" laughed Du Cane. "Why, wasn't the Burke affair an equally
blackguardly bit of business--the more so, indeed, when one recollects
that young Ronald Burke had fallen in love with Sonia."

"Leave my girl's name out of our conversation, Arnold, or, by Gad! you
shall pay for it!" cried the tall, dark-haired, clean-shaven man, as
he sprang from his chair and faced his visitor threateningly. "Taunt
me as much as ever it pleases you. Allege what you like against me. I
know I'm an infernal blackguard, posing here as a smug and respectable
churchgoer. I admit any charge you like to lay at my door, but I'll
not have my girl's name associated with my misdeeds. Understand that!
She's pure and honest, and she knows nothing of her father's life."

"Don't you believe that, my dear fellow. She's eighteen now, remember,
and I fancy she had her eyes opened last February down at the Villa
Vespa, when that unfortunate little trouble arose."

Arnold Du Cane, the round-faced man who spoke, was rather short and
stout, with ruddy cheeks, a small moustache and a prematurely bald
head--a man whose countenance showed him to be a _bon vivant_, but
whose quick, shifty eyes would have betrayed to a close observer a
readiness of subterfuge which would have probably aroused suspicion.
His exterior was that of a highly refined and polished man. His grey
tweed suit bore evidence of having been cut by a smart tailor, and as
he lolled back in his big saddle-bag chair he contemplated the fine
diamond upon his white, well-manicured hand, and seemed entirely at
his ease.

That August afternoon was stiflingly hot, and through the open French
windows leading into the old-world garden, so typically English with
its level lawns, neatly trimmed box-hedges and blazing flowerbeds,
came the drowsy hum of the insects and the sweet scent of a wealth of
roses everywhere.

The pretty house in which