seek Lord Rotherby. She believes that she knows where to find him--in
some disreputable haunt, no doubt, whither her ladyship would have
been better advised to have sent a servant. But women are wayward
cattle--wayward, headstrong cattle! Have you not found them so, Mr.
Caryll?"

"I have found that the opinion is common to most husbands," said Mr.
Caryll, then added a question touching Mistress Winthrop, and wondered
would she not be joining them at table.

"The poor child keeps her chamber," said the earl. "She is
overwrought--overwrought! I am afraid her ladyship--" He broke off
abruptly, and coughed. "She is overwrought," he repeated in conclusion.
"So that we dine alone."

And alone they dined. Ostermore, despite the havoc suffered by his
fortunes, kept an excellent table and a clever cook, and Mr. Caryll was
glad to discover in his sire this one commendable trait.

The conversation was desultory throughout the repast; but when the cloth
was raised and the table cleared of all but the dishes of fruit and
the decanters of Oporto, Canary and Madeira, there came a moment of
expansion.

Mr. Caryll was leaning back in his chair, fingering the stem of his
wine-glass, watching the play of sunlight through the ruddy amber of the
wine, and considering the extraordinarily odd position of a man sitting
at table, by the merest chance, almost, with a father who was not aware
that he had begotten him. A question from his lordship came to stir him
partially from the reverie into which he was beginning to lapse.

"Do you look to make a long sojourn in England, Mr. Caryll?"

"It will depend," was the vague and half-unconscious answer, "upon the
success of the matter I am come to transact."

There ensued a brief pause, during which Mr. Caryll fell again into his
abstraction.

"Where do you dwell when in France, sir?" inquired my lord, as if to
make polite conversation.

Mr. Caryll lulled by his musings into carelessness, answered truthfully,
"At Maligny, in Normandy."

The next moment there was a tinkle of breaking glass, and Mr. Caryll
realized his indiscretion and turned cold.

Lord Ostermore, who had been in the act of raising his glass, fetched
it down again so suddenly that the stem broke in his fingers, and the
mahogany was flooded with the liquor. A servant hastened forward, and
set a fresh glass for his lordship. That done, Ostermore signed to the
man to withdraw. The fellow went, closing the door, and leaving