m the little
girl was so kind? Yes: well?"

"You reminded me of Jacques Rolla, that is all."

"Oh, come! It is not as bad as that!" Lord Tancred exclaimed--and he
laughed. "I can collect a few thousands still, even here, and I can go
to Canada. I believe there is any quantity of money to be made there
with a little capital, and it is a nice, open-air life. I just looked in
this afternoon on my way back from Scotland to tell you I should be
going out to prospect, about the end of November and could not join you
for the pheasants on the 20th, as you were good enough to ask me to do."

The financier half closed his eyes. When he did this there was always
something of importance working in his brain.

"You have not any glaring vices, Tancred," he said. "You are no gambler
either on the turf or at cards. You are not over addicted to expensive
ladies. You are cultivated, for a sportsman, and you have made one or
two decent speeches in the House of Lords. You are, in fact, rather a
fine specimen of your class. It seems a pity you should have to shut
down and go to the Colonies."

"Oh, I don't know! And I have not altogether got to shut down," the
young man said, "only the show is growing rather rotten over here. We
have let the rabble--the most unfit and ignorant--have the casting vote,
and the machine now will crush any man. I have kept out of politics as
much as I can and I am glad."

Francis Markrute got up and lowered the blind a few inches--a miserable
September sun was trying to shine into the room. If Lord Tancred had not
been so preoccupied with his own thoughts he would have remarked this
restlessness on the part of his host. He was no fool; but his mind was
far away. It almost startled him when the cold, deliberate voice
continued:

"I have a proposition to make to you should you care to accept it. I
have a niece--a widow--she is rather an attractive lady. If you will
marry her I will pay off all your mortgages and settle on her quite a
princely dower."

"Good God!" said Lord Tancred.

The financier reddened a little about the temples, and his eyes for an
instant gave forth a flash of steel. There had been an infinite variety
of meanings hidden in the exclamation, but he demanded suavely:

"What point of the question causes you to exclaim 'Good God'?"

The sang-froid of Lord Tancred never deserted him.

"The whole thing," he said--"to marry at all, to begin with, and to
marry an unknown woman, to have