he capacity of his
mind. He could not keep himself from trembling a little, and from
diverting to a screen beyond her shoulder a gaze which he felt to be
overtly dimmed and embarrassed.

"I have kept you waiting," she murmured.

The soft sound of her voice came to his ears as from a distance. It
bore an unfamiliar note, upon the strangeness of which he dwelt for a
detached instant. Then its meaning broke in upon his consciousness from
all sides, and lighted up his heavy face with the glow of a conqueror's
self-centred smile. He bent his eyes upon her, and noted with a
controlled exaltation how her glance in turn deferred to his, and
fluttered beneath it, and shrank away. He squared his big shoulders and
lifted his head. Still holding her jewelled hand in his, he turned
and led her toward the sofa. Halting, he bowed with an exaggerated
genuflection and flourish of his free hand to Miss Madden, the while he
flashed at her a glance at once of challenge and of deprecation. Through
the sensitized contact of the other hand, he felt that the woman he held
bowed also, and in his own spirit of confused defiance and entreaty.
The laugh he gave then seemed to dispel the awkwardness which had
momentarily hung over the mocking salutation.

Miss Madden laughed too. "Oh, I surrender," she said. "You drag
congratulations from me."

Some quality in the tone of this ungracious speech had the effect of
putting the party at its ease. Lady Cressage seated herself beside her
friend on the sofa, and gently, abstractedly, patted one of her hands.
Thorpe remained on his feet, looking down at the pair with satisfied
cheerfulness. He tool, a slip of paper from his pocket, to support a
statement he was making.

"I'm forever telling you what a strain the City is on a man in my
position," he said--"and today I had the curiosity to keep an account of
what happened. Here it is. I had thirty callers. Of those, how many do
you suppose came to see me on my own business? Just eight. That is to
say, their errands were about investments of mine, but most of them
managed to get in some word about axes of their own to grind. All the
rest made no pretence at all of thinking about anybody but themselves.
I've classified them, one by one, here.

"First, there were six men who wanted me to take shares of one sort or
another, and I had to more or less listen to what they tried to make
out their companies were like. They were none of them any good. Eight
di