quite on the cards, you know, Letty, that Mandeleys may have to go." Letitia made a little grimace. "I am getting perfectly callous," she confided. "If it did, this house would probably follow, father would realise everything he could lay his hands upon and become the autocrat of some French watering place, and I should cease to be the honest but impecunious daughter of a wicked nobleman, and enjoy the liberty of the middle-class young women you were telling me about. It wouldn't be so bad!" "Or marry--" Margaret began. "Mr. David Thain," the butler announced. The juxtaposition of words perhaps incited in Letitia a greater interest as she turned away from her sister to welcome the first of her guests. He had to cross a considerable space of the drawing-room, with its old-fashioned conglomeration of furniture untouched and unrenovated for the last two generations, but he showed not the slightest sign of awkwardness or self-consciousness in any form. He was slight and none too powerfully built, but his body was singularly erect, and he moved with the alert dignity of a man in perfect health and used to gymnastic training. His clean-shaven face disclosed nervous lines which his manner contradicted. His mouth was unexpectedly hard, his deep-set grey eyes steel-like, almost brilliant. These things made for a strength which had in it, however, nothing of the uncouth. The only singularity about his face and manner, as he took his hostess' fingers, was the absence of any smile of greeting upon his lips. "I am afraid that I am a little early," he apologised. "We are all the more grateful to you," Lady Margaret assured him. "Letitia and I always bore one another terribly. A married sister, you know, feels rather like the cuckoo returning to the discarded nest." "One hates other people's liberty so much," Letitia sighed. "I should have thought liberty was a state very easy to acquire," David Thain observed didactically. "That is because you come from a land where all the women are clever and the men tolerant," Letitia replied. "Where is that husband of yours, Margaret?" "I am ashamed to say," her sister confessed, "that he stayed down in the morning room while Gossett fetched him a glass of sherry. Look at him now," she added, as Sir Robert entered the room unannounced and came smiling towards them. "How can I have any faith in a husband like that. Doesn't he look as though the only thing that could trouble him in life was that he hadn't been able to get here a few minutes earlier!" "Given away, eh?" the newcomer groaned, as he kissed Letitia's fingers. "How are you, Mr. Thain? Your country is entirely to blame for my habits. I got so into the habit of drinking cocktails while I was over there that I really prefer my aperitif to my wine at 

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