is bearing had deteriorated in these few minutes.
He had cut such a gallant figure when he entered the room, with his
sparkling eye and smile, his almost jaunty manner, his superior tailor's
plumage--and now he was such a crestfallen and wilted thing! Remembering
their last conversation together--remembering indeed how full of liking
for this young nobleman he had been when they last met--Thorpe paused
to wonder at the fact that he felt no atom of pity for him now. What was
his grievance? What had Plowden done to provoke this savage hostility?
Thorpe could not tell. He knew only that unnamed forces dragged him
forward to hurt and humiliate his former friend. Obscurely, no doubt,
there was something about a woman in it. Plowden had been an admirer of
Lady Cressage. There was her father's word for it that if there had been
money enough he would have wished to marry her. There had been, as well,
the General's hint that if the difficulty of Plowden's poverty
were removed, he might still wish to marry her--a hint which Thorpe
discovered to be rankling with a sudden new soreness in his mind. Was
that why he hated Plowden? No--he said to himself that it was not.
He was going to marry Lady Cressage himself. Her letter, signifying
delicately her assent to his proposal, had come to him that very
morning--was in his pocket now. What did he care about the bye-gone
aspirations of other would-be suitors? And, as for Plowden, he had
not even known of her return to London. Clearly there remained no
communications of any sort between them. It was not at all on her
account, he assured himself, that he had turned against Plowden. But
what other reason could there be? He observed his visitor's perturbed
and dejected mien with a grim kind of satisfaction--but still he could
not tell why.

"This is all terribly important to me," the nobleman said, breaking
the unpleasant silence. His voice was surcharged with earnestness.
"Apparently you are annoyed with something--what it may be I can't for
the life of me make out. All I can say is"--and he broke off with a
helpless gesture which seemed to imply that he feared to say anything.

Thorpe put out his lips. "I don't know what you mean," he said,
brusquely.

"What I mean"--the other echoed, with bewildered vagueness of glance.
"I'm all at sea. I don't in the least grasp the meaning of anything. You
yourself volunteered the declaration that you would do great things for
me. 'We are rich men tog