quarter the money should come. Personally, as you know, I never interfere."Mr. Wadham coughed in somewhat embarrassed fashion. "As a matter of fact, your lordship," he confessed, with a most illogical sense that it was his duty to apologise for his client's impecuniosity, "as a matter of fact, neither my partners nor I can at the present moment see where a sum of eighteen thousand pounds can be raised."

The Marquis rose to his feet and shook the cigarette ash carefully from his coat. "Our conversation, Mr. Wadham," he said, "is reaching a stage which bores me. I have just remembered, too," he added, with a glance at the clock, "that my daughter is entertaining a few friends to lunch. You must write to Merridrew. He is really a most excellent agent. He will tell you what balances are likely to be available during the next few months."

Mr. Wadham received the suggestion without enthusiasm. "We made an application to Mr. Merridrew some few weeks ago," he remarked, "as we needed some ready money for the purpose of briefing the barristers. Mr. Merridrew's reply was not encouraging."

"Ah!" the Marquis murmured. "Merridrew is a gloomy dog sometimes. Try him again. It is astonishing how elastic he can be if he is squeezed."

"I am afraid your lordship has done all the squeezing," the solicitor observed ruefully.

A little trill of feminine laughter rang through the room. Two smartly attired young ladies were seated upon a divan near the door, surrounded by a little group of acquaintances. One of them leaned forward and nodded as the Marquis and his companion passed. "How do you do, Marquis?" she said, in distinctly transatlantic accents.

The behaviour of his client, under such circumstances, remained an object lesson to Mr. Wadham for the rest of his life. The Marquis gazed with the faintest expression of surprise at, or perhaps through, the young person who had addressed him. Fumbling for a moment in his waistcoat pocket, he raised a horn-rimmed monocle to his eye, dropped it almost at once, and passed on without the flicker of an eyelid. On their way to the outside door, however, he shook his head gravely. "What a singular exhibition," he murmured,--"demonstration, perhaps I should say--of the crudeness of modern social intercourse! Was it my fancy, Wadham, or did the young person up there address me?"

"She certainly did," the other assented. "She even called you by name."

They were standing in the courtyard 

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