nel's last attack of influenza.

But he had trusted rather too much to his face. A painful flush
spread over it when he found Miss Tancred looking at him with a
lucid, penetrating gaze. She had recognized his guilt; it was
impossible to tell whether she had measured the provocation.

He, at any rate, had discovered the secret of her silence; it was
not stupidity, it was shame. The spectacle of the Colonel's
conversational debauches had weaned her forever from the desire of
speech. For the rest of the meal he, too, sat silent, building a
cairn of cherry-stones at the side of his plate; an appropriate
memorial of a young man bored to death at a dinner-table.

III

"Well now," said the Colonel, rousing himself from a brief nirvana
of digestion, "I hope that you will not be dull." He said it with
the confidence of a man who has just laid before you a pretty
convincing sample of his social powers.

Durant started; he was alone with the Colonel and the wine, and had
just made the discovery that when the Colonel's face was at rest he
was very like an owl.

"To-morrow we'll go exploring together. I should like to take you
over my little property."

As a matter of fact, the property was considerable; but Durant
noticed that its owner applied the endearing diminutive to every
object that appealed specially to his egotism. It was a peculiarity
of the Colonel that he was ready to melt with affection over the
things that belonged to himself, and was roused almost to ferocity
by whatever interested other people.

"I dare say it will be good for you to see some fresh faces and to
be put--in touch--in touch with fresh ideas."

You would have said that Durant had been sitting for seven years
with his feet on the fender while the Colonel roamed the world.

Durant agreed. He was being hypnotized by the hooked nose and the
round hazel eyes with their radiating wrinkles. He had been five
hours in Coton Manor, it felt like five years, and the evening had
only just begun.

His host stared at him, fidgeted nervously for five minutes, plunged
into nirvana again, emerged, and with a shamefaced smile suggested
that the ladies would be getting impatient. In the drawing-room his
nervousness increased; he went on like a person distracted with an
intolerable desire; he sat down and got up again; he pirouetted; he
played with ornaments; he wandered uneasily about the room, opening
and shutting windows, setting pictures straight, and l