g old and
wanted the companionship of one of his kind. It was a living
anyway--but a giving up of everything that had constituted life in the
past--and the giving up of his exquisite Lou. How could he ask her to
share that life with him?--the primitive conditions, the total absence
of luxuries, the rough, every-day existence?

And Lou, so perfectly dressed, so absolutely modern and dainty, waited
on hand and foot----

But she insisted, seeing that he was hesitating and was trying to keep
something from her.

"What about you, Luke?"

He had not time to reply, for from the hall below a shrill voice
called to them both by name.

"Mr. de Mountford, Miss Harris, the young people want to dance. You'll
join in, won't you?"

Already he was on his feet, every trace of emotion swept away from his
face, together with every crease from his immaculate dress clothes,
and every stray wisp of hair from his well-groomed head. Not a man,
torn with passion, fighting the battle of life against overwhelming
odds, casting away from him the hand which he would have given his
last drop of blood to possess--only the man of the world, smiling
while his very soul was being wrung--only the puppet dancing to the
conventional world's tune.

"Dancing?" he said lightly: "Rather--Lady Ducies may I have this first
waltz? No?--Oh! I say that's too bad. The first Lancers then? Good!
Lou, may I have this dance?"

And the world went on just the same.

CHAPTER XI

AND THERE ARE SOCIAL DUTIES TO PERFORM

The first November fog.

The world had wagged on its matter-of-fact way for more than six
months now, since that day in April when Philip de Mountford--under
cover of lies told by Parker--had made his way into Lord Radclyffe's
presence: more than five months since the favoured nephew had been so
unceremoniously thrust out of his home.

Spring had yielded to summer, summer given way to autumn, and already
winter was treading hard on autumn's heels. The autumn session had
filled London with noise and bustle, with political dinner parties and
monster receptions, with new plays at all the best theatres, and
volumes of ephemeral literature.

And all that was--to-night--wrapped in a dense fog, the first of the
season, quite a stranger, too, in London, for scientists had asserted
positively that the era of the traditional "pea-souper" was over; the
metropolis would know it no more.

Colonel Harris was in town with his sister, Lady Ryder