hings you have lost?"

"Yes--he makes me feel the same faith: that what I lose will be
returned to me. Just as I found my cloak. And that if I enter into an
undertaking, it will be successful."

"And your life has been always successful?"

"Yes--almost always. We have succeeded with almost everything."

"Why, yes," said Aaron, looking at her again.

But even so, he could see a good deal of hard wornness under her
satisfaction. She had had her suffering, sure enough. But none the
less, she was in the main satisfied. She sat there, a good hostess, and
expected the homage due to her success. And of course she got it. Aaron
himself did his little share of shoe-licking, and swallowed the taste of
boot-polish with a grimace, knowing what he was about.

The dinner wound gaily to an end. The ladies retired. Sir William left
his seat of honour at the end of the table and came and sat next to
Aaron, summoning the other three men to cluster near.

"Now, Colonel," said the host, "send round the bottle."

With a flourish of the elbow and shoulder, the Colonel sent on the port,
actually port, in those bleak, post-war days!

"Well, Mr. Sisson," said Sir William, "we will drink to your kind
Providence: providing, of course, that we shall give no offence by so
doing."

"No, sir; no, sir! The Providence belonged to Mr. Lilly. Mr. Sisson put
his money on kindly fortune, I believe," said Arthur, who rosy and fresh
with wine, looked as if he would make a marvelous _bonne bouchee_ for a
finely-discriminating cannibal.

"Ah, yes, indeed! A much more ingratiating lady to lift our glasses to.
Mr. Sisson's kindly fortune. _Fortuna gentil-issima_! Well, Mr. Sisson,
and may your Lady Fortune ever smile on you."

Sir William lifted his glass with an odd little smirk, some touch of a
strange, prim old satyr lurking in his oddly inclined head. Nay, more
than satyr: that curious, rather terrible iron demon that has fought
with the world and wrung wealth from it, and which knows all about it.
The devilish spirit of iron itself, and iron machines. So, with his
strange, old smile showing his teeth rather terribly, the old knight
glowered sightlessly over his glass at Aaron. Then he drank: the
strange, careful, old-man's gesture in drinking.

"But," said Aaron, "if Fortune is a female---"

"Fortune! Fortune! Why, Fortune is a lady. What do you say, Major?"

"She has all the airs of one, Sir William," said the Major, with the
wistful grim