ment.
Then he turned abruptly away.

"Good-night!" he said.

He disappeared through the swing doors. She strolled across the room to
where her friends were sitting in a circle, laughing and talking. Her
father, who had just come in and joined them, gripped her by the arm as
she sat down.

"What does it mean?" he demanded, with shaking voice. "Did you see
that he was there with Pritchard--your young man--that wretched estate
agent's clerk? I tell you that Pritchard was pumping him for all he was
worth."

"My dear father," she whispered, coldly, "don't be melodramatic. You
give yourself away the whole time. Go to bed if you can't behave like a
man."

The lights had been turned low, there was no one else in the room. The
little old gentleman with the eyeglass leaned forward.

"Have you any notion, my dear Elizabeth," he asked, "why our friend
Pritchard is so much in evidence just at present?"

"Not on account of you, Jimmy," she answered, "nor of any one else here,
in fact. The truth is he has conceived a violent admiration for me--an
admiration so pronounced, indeed, that he hates to let me out of his
sight."

They all laughed uproariously. Then Walter Crease, the journalist,
leaned forward,--a man with a long, narrow face, yellow-stained fingers,
and hollow cheekbones. He glanced around the room before he spoke, and
his voice sounded like a hoarse whisper.

"See here," he said, "seems to me Pritchard is getting mighty awkward.
He hasn't got his posse around him in this country, anyway."

There was a dead silence for several seconds. Then the little old
gentleman nodded solemnly.

"I am a trifle tired of Pritchard myself," he admitted, "and he
certainly knows too much. He carries too much in his head to go around
safely."

The eyes of Elizabeth were bright.

"He treats us like children," she declared. "To-night he has told the
whole of my affairs to a perfect stranger. It is intolerable!"

The little party broke up soon after. Only Walter Crease and the
man called Jimmy Post were left talking, and they retired into the
window-seat, whispering together.

Tavernake, with his hands thrust deep in his overcoat pockets, left the
hotel and strode along the Strand. Some fancy seized him before he had
gone many paces, and turning abruptly to the left he descended to the
Embankment. He made his way to the very seat upon which he had sat once
before with Beatrice. With folded arms he leaned back in the corner,