as a smile that merely
stretched the corners of his mouth a little,--it had no geniality.

"Possibly not!" he answered--"But I should have had a try! I should
certainly have pointed out to her the folly of her present adventure."

"Do you know what it is?"

He paused before replying.

"Well,--hardly! But I have a guess!"

"Is that so? Then I'll admit you're cleverer than I am!"

"Thats a great compliment! But even Miss Lydia Herbert, brilliant woman
of the world as she is, doesn't know EVERYTHING!"

"Not quite!" she replied, stifling a tiny yawn--"Nor do you! But most
things that are worth knowing I know. There's a lot one need never
learn. The chief business of life nowadays is to have heaps of money
and know how to spend it. That's Morgana's way."

Mr. Sam Gwent folded up his newspaper, flattened it into a neat parcel,
and put it in his pocket.

"She has a great deal too much money"--he said, "and-to my
thinking--she does NOT know how to spend it,--not in the right womanly
way. She has gone off in the midst of many duties to society at a time
when she should have stayed--"

Miss Herbert opened her brown, rather insolent eyes wide at this and
laughed.

"Does it matter?" she asked. "The old man left his pile to her
'absolutely and unconditionally'--without any orders as to society
duties. And I don't believe YOU'VE any authority over her, have you? Or
are you suddenly turning up as a trustee?"

He surveyed her with a kind of admiring sarcasm.

"No. I'm only an uncle,"--he said--"Uncle of the boy that shot himself
this morning for her sake!"

Miss Herbert uttered a sharp cry. She was startled and horrified.

"What!... Jack?... Shot himself?... Oh, how dreadful!--I'm--I'm
sorry--!"

"You're not!"--retorted Gwent--"So don't pretend. No one is sorry for
anybody else nowadays. There's no time. And no inclination. Jack was
always a fool--perhaps he's best out of it. I've just seen him--dead.
He's better-looking so than when alive."

She sprang up from her rocking chair in a blaze of indignation.

"You are brutal!" she exclaimed, with a half sob--"Positively brutal!"

"Not at all!" he answered, composedly--"Only commonplace. It is you
advanced women that are brutal,--not we left-behind men. Jack was a
fool, I say--he staked the whole of his game on Morgana Royal, and he
lost. That was the last straw. If he could have married her he would
have cleared all his debts over and over--and that's what he had h