as about it none of the repressive etiquette
which governs similar institutions in England and America,--the
diplomatist felt as doubtless feels any imaginative man who for the
first time goes under fire; what he experienced was not so much dread as
a wonder how he was likely to bear himself during this now imminent
meeting with Peggy's husband.

Suddenly Vanderlyn caught sight of Pargeter, and that some moments
before he himself was seen by him. The millionaire was standing watching
a game of whist, and he looked as he generally looked when at L'Union,
that is, bored and ill at ease, but otherwise much as usual.

Tom Pargeter was a short man, and though he was over forty, his fair
hair, fat face, and neat, small features gave him an almost boyish look
of youth. He had one most unusual physical peculiarity, which caused him
to be remembered by strangers: this peculiarity consisted in the fact
that one of his eyes was green and the other blue. His manners were
those of a boy, of a boorish lad, rather than of a man; his vocabulary
was oddly limited, and yet he seldom used the correct word, for he
delighted in verbal aliases.

Seeing Pargeter there before him, Laurence Vanderlyn, for the first time
in his life, learned what so many men and women learn very early in
their lives,--what it is to be afraid of a person, who, however
despicable, is, or may become, your tyrant.

Hitherto his relations with Peggy's husband, though nothing to be proud
of, had brought with them nothing of conscious shame. Nay more, Laurence
Vanderlyn, in that long past of which now nothing remained, had tried to
see what was best in a character which, if fashioned meanly, was not
wholly bad. But now, to-night, he felt that he despised, hated, and,
what was to him, far worse, feared the human being towards whom he was
advancing with apparently eager steps.

Suddenly the eyes of the two men met, but Pargeter was far too
pre-occupied with himself and his own concerns to notice anything
strained or unusual in Vanderlyn's face. All he saw was that here at
last was the man he wanted to see; his sulky face lightened, and he
walked forward with hand outstretched.

"Hullo! Grid," he cried, "so here you are at last! You see I've not
gone? There came a wire from the boy; he's hurt his knee-cap!"

Vanderlyn murmured an exclamation of concern; as they met he had wheeled
round, thus avoiding the other's hand.

"Nothing much," went on Pargeter quickly, "b