here the
dying embers of the fire threw a red glow on the sofa where she had
sat with him, and the footstool on which her evening shoe had rested.

And the conventional man of the world, schooled from childhood onward
to discipline and self-control, fell on both knees against that mute
footstool, and leaning forward he pressed his burning lips against the
silk cushions of the sofa, which still bore the impress and the
fragrance of her exquisite shoulders.

Then he, too, went out of the room.

CHAPTER XII

SHALL A MAN ESCAPE HIS FATE?

On the way to the Danish Legation, Colonel Harris asked Luke what his
plans were for the evening.

"I shall," replied Luke, "call at Grosvenor Square. I may find Uncle
Rad, or Philip, or both at home. I mean to have a good tussle about
this wintering abroad. It's really most important."

"I call it criminal," retorted Colonel Harris, "keeping a man in
London who has been used to go south in the winter for the past twenty
years at least."

"Uncle Rad is still fairly well now, though I do think he looks more
feeble than usual. He ought to go at once."

"But," suggested Louisa, "he oughtn't to go alone."

"No. He certainly ought not."

"Would Mr. de Mountford go with him?"

"I don't think so."

"This new man of his, then?"

"That," said Luke hotly, "would be madness. The man is really a
drunkard."

"But somebody ought to go."

"Edie would be only too willing--if she is allowed."

"Edie?" exclaimed Louisa.

And she added with a smile:

"What will Reggie Duggan have to say to that?"

"Nothing," he replied quietly. "Reggie Duggan has cried off."

"You don't mean that."

"He has given up Edie who has little or nothing a year, and become
engaged to Marian Montagu who has eight thousand pounds a year of her
own."

"Poor Edie!" murmured Louisa, whilst Colonel Harris's exclamation was
equally to the point and far more forcible, and more particularly
concerned the Honourable Reginald Duggan.

"Yes," rejoined Luke, "it has hit her hard, coming on the top of other
things. There's no gainsaying the fact, is there, Colonel Harris, that
we four brothers and sister owe something to Uncle Arthur's son?"

"The handle of a riding whip," came from out the depths of Colonel
Harris's fur coat. "Stupid way parsons have of saying that to wish a
man dead is tantamount to murder. I am committing murder now for a
matter of that, for I wish that blackguard were buried in one o