ok another name and
went abroad. Anyhow, he disappeared. It was all he could do. He was
lucky to get off with that; wasn't he, Peter? wasn't he, father?"

"What he got off with," said Guion, "was a quality of tragic interest
which never pertains to the people who stick to the Street called
Straight."

"Oh, certainly," Mrs. Fane assented, dryly. "He did acquire that. But
I'm surprised to hear you commend it; aren't you, father? aren't you,
Peter?"

"I'm not commending it," Guion asserted; "I only feel its force. I've a
great deal of sympathy with any poor beggar in his--downfall."

"Since when?"

The look with which Rodney Temple accompanied the question once more
affected Davenant oddly. It probably made the same impression on Guion,
since he replied with a calmness that seemed studied: "Since--lately.
Why do you ask?"

"Oh, for no reason. It only strikes me as curious that your sympathy
should take that turn."

"Precisely," Miss Guion chimed in. "It's not a bit like you, papa. You
used to be harder on dishonorable things than any one."

"Well, I'm not now."

It was clear to Davenant by this time that in these words Guion was not
so much making a statement as flinging a challenge. He made that evident
by the way in which he sat upright, squared his shoulders, and rested a
large, white fist clenched upon the table. His eyes, too, shone,
glittered rather, with a light quite other than that which a host
usually turns upon his guests. To Davenant, as to Mrs. Temple, it seemed
as if he had "something on his mind"--something of which he had a
persistent desire to talk covertly, in the way in which an undetected
felon will risk discovery to talk about the crime.

No one else apparently at the table shared this impression. Rodney
Temple, with eyes pensively downcast, toyed with the seeds of a pear,
while Miss Guion and Mrs. Fane began speaking of some other incident of
what to them was above everything else, "the Service." A minute or two
later Olivia rose.

"Come, Cousin Cherry. Come, Drusilla," she said, with her easy,
authoritative manner. Then, apparently with an attempt to make up for
her neglect of Davenant, she said, as she held the door open for the
ladies to pass: "Don't let them keep you here forever. We shall be
terribly dull till you join us."

He was not too dense to comprehend that the words were conventional, as
the smile she flung him was perfunctory. Nevertheless, the little
attention pleased h