sual tact you can apologize
for me, Lucia."

The compliment pleased her.

"Certainly, I can, if your absence is really needful, Ross," said my
lady.

"It is needful, I assure you. I can tell you all I have done when I
return; just now I must hurry off, or I shall not catch the train."

As the earl quitted Cawdor, he regretted deeply that his son should have
complicated the situation by enforcing silence as regarded his mother.

He pondered a great deal on what he should say when he returned--above
all, if the boy's trouble was, as he imagined, the loss of money.

"I must not let his mother know," thought the earl. "Boys are boys; she
would think he was lost altogether if she knew that he had betting and
gambling debts. Whatever he owes, no matter what it is, I will give him
a check for it, and make him promise me that it shall be the last time."

He never thought of any other danger; that his son had fallen in love or
wanted to marry never occurred to him. He was glad when he reached
Dunmore House; the old housekeeper met him in the hall.

"I have dinner ready, my lord," she said. "Lord Chandos told me you were
coming."

He looked round expectantly.

"Is not Lord Chandos here?" he asked.

It occurred to him that the housekeeper looked troubled and distressed.

"No," she replied, "he is not staying here--they are staying in the
Queen's Hotel, in Piccadilly."

"They," he cried, "whom do you mean by they? Has Lord Chandos friends
with him?"

The woman's face grew pale. She shrunk perceptibly from the keen, gray
eyes.

"I understood his lordship that he was not alone," she replied. "I may
have made a mistake. I understood him also that he should be with you by
eight this evening, when you had finished dinner."

"Why could he not dine with me?" he thought. "Sends a telegram for me,
and then leaves me to dine alone. It is not like Lance."

But thinking over it would not solve the mystery; the earl went to his
room and dressed for dinner. He had ordered a bottle of his favorite
Madeira, of which wonderful tales were told.

Then he sat thinking about his son, and his heart softened toward him.
He thought of the handsome, curly-headed young boy whose grand spirit no
one but my lady could subdue. He laughed aloud as he remembered the
struggles between himself and his heir--they had always ended in his
defeat; but when my lady came on the scene it was quite another thing,
the defeat was on the other side the