ir opposite Zeal's.

"Tell me all about it," he said.

"Brathland and I had not been friends for some years. He was a bounder,
and an ass in the bargain. I never, even when we were on speaking
terms, made any particular effort to hide what I thought of him--it
wasn't worth while. Of course, with every mother firing her girls at his
head, and the flatterers and toadies from whom a prospective duke cannot
escape if he would, he had an opinion of himself that would have made me
the object of his particular rancor, even if I hadn't cut him out with
three different women that couldn't marry either of us. When I got the
verdict that I must pull up or go under, he chose that particular moment
to take up with Stella Starr, the only woman I ever cared a pin for.
Somehow, he got wind of my condition, and knowing that I would prefer to
retire as gracefully as possible, it struck him as the refinement of
vengeance to make a laughing-stock of me when I was no longer in a
condition to play the game out; to advertise me as a worn-out rake for
whom the world of Stella Starrs had no further use. We never spoke again
until Friday night."

He paused, then mixed and drank another whiskey-and-soda, lit a
cigarette, and resumed.

"I had objected to his being let into the mine, which Vanneck's agent
and private letters had persuaded the rest of us would make our
fortunes; but I was helpless, for he was not only Vanneck's cousin, but
his brother is out in Africa and also interested in the mine. I
therefore consented to attend the dinner at which the whole business was
to be discussed, fully intending to treat him as I should any stranger
to whom I had just been introduced.

"At first all went well enough. We had the private dining-room and
smoking-room on the second floor at the Club, the dinner was excellent,
and Brathland, although nearly opposite me, behaved as decently as he
always did when sober. It was champagne that let loose the bounder in
him, and that was one reason I always so thoroughly despised him: the
man that is not a gentleman when he is drunk has no right to be alive at
all.

"We were not long discussing the mine threadbare, for we did not know
enough about it to enlarge into any picturesque details, and the agent,
who had seen each of us separately, was not present. Raglin read a
personal letter from Vanneck, and Brathland another from Dick. Then, the
subject being exhausted long before we reached the end of dinner, w