d Henry had made upon Denis Malster had
been unfavourable in the extreme. Here was a man who could not be relied
upon to be the same two days running. On the occasion of his first visit
to Bullion Ltd. he had looked a vagabond; his clothes had hung in
shapeless folds about his body, completely concealing whatever symmetry
it might have possessed.

Denis remembered the faded green tie and the badly fitting collar he
had seen Lord Henry wearing at the Inner Light meeting, the same green
tie and badly fitting collar in which the young nobleman had had the
simplicity to be photographed for the _Bystander_ only a few weeks
previously,--and filled with consternation at the unaccountable
metamorphosis compared it with Lord Henry's present elegant neck-gear.

It was monstrous to be so unreliable, monstrous to be so saltatory, so
capricious, as to upset other people's surest reckonings.

On the following morning it was obvious that Denis had made a supreme
effort. It was an effect in white flannels with a superb foulard tie of
navy blue and wonderful white buckskin shoes. He reached the
breakfast-table at Brineweald Park unusually early, so eager was he to
discover what further sartorial devilry Lord Henry would be guilty of,
and he was not a little disappointed to find only Guy Tyrrell down.

"Hullo Malster!" cried Guy, looking up from a partly consumed dish of
pork chop. "What the hell's up,--are you going to be married?"

"Don't be an ass!" Denis replied, helping himself to devilled kidneys.

"You're looking a howling swell this morning," continued the junior
secretary.

"Oh, you mean my rig-out?" Denis enquired with a feeble pretence at not
having understood the meaning of Guy's remarks. "That's nothing. As a
matter of fact I hadn't tried these on since they were made, and I was
wondering what they were like."

"Oh, tell us what you think of Lord Henry!" Guy pursued after a while.

"What do you?" Denis retorted, endeavouring to show indifference.

"He's rather wonderful," Guy exclaimed.

"What do you mean--wonderful?" the other demanded with an unmistakable
sinking feeling in his stomach.

"Well, you know, smart in every sense of the word, brains and
everything."

If Guy had deliberately intended to give Denis indigestion he could not
have set about his task with greater scientific understanding.

In a moment Miss Mallowcoid appeared. Breakfast to her was an important
meal only when she was visiting. At other