althy, surveying herself for the first time from a new and an
entirely different point of view. She was not pleased with the
picture. She began to loathe herself more than she pitied her brother.
Something like a smile came into her clouded face as she speculated on
Randolph Shaw's method of handling Evelyn Banks had she fallen to him
as a wife. The quiet power in that man's face signified the presence
of a manhood that--ah, and just here it occurred to her that Lady
Bazelhurst felt the force of that power even though she never had seen
the man. She hated him because he was strong enough to oppose her, to
ignore her, to laugh at her impotence.

The smouldering anger and a growing sense of fairness combined at
length in the determination to take her brother and his wife to task
for the morning's outrage, let the consequences be what they might.
When she joined the people downstairs before dinner, there was a red
spot in each cheek and a steady look in her eyes that caused the duke
to neglect woefully the conversation he was carrying on with Mrs.
Odwell.

Dinner was delayed for nearly half an hour while four of the guests
finished their "rubber." Penelope observed that the party displayed
varying emotions. It afterward transpired that the hunters had spent
most of the afternoon in her ladyship's distant lodge playing bridge
for rather high stakes. Little Miss Folsom was pitifully unresponsive
to the mirth of Mr. Odwell. She could ill afford to lose six hundred
dollars. Lady Bazelhurst was in a frightful mood. Her guests had so
far forgotten themselves as to win more than a thousand dollars of
the Banks legacy and she was not a cheerful loser--especially as his
lordship had dropped an additional five hundred. The winners were
riotously happy. They had found the sport glorious. An observer,
given to deductions, might have noticed that half of the diners were
immoderately hilarious, the other half studiously polite.

Lord Bazelhurst wore a hunted look and drank more than one or two
highballs. From time to time he cast furtive glances at his wife. He
laughed frequently at the wrong time and mirthlessly.

"He's got something on his mind," whispered Odwell in comment.

"Yes; he always laughs when there is anything on his mind," replied
Mrs. De Peyton. "That's the way he gets it off."

After dinner no one proposed cards. The party edged off into twos and
threes and explained how luck had been with or against them. Penelope