complete what was wanting in myself; one whom I could reverence—and in Lady Lolita I had found my ideal.

Yet the difference of our stations was an insurmountable barrier in the first place, and in the second, if the young Earl knew that I, his secretary, had had the audacity to propose to his favourite sister, my connexion with the Stanchesters would, I knew, be abruptly severed. Nevertheless, I had with throbbing heart confessed my secret to my love, and being aware of my deep and honest affection she allowed me to bask in the sunshine of her beauty, and she was trusting in me to extricate her from a peril which she had declared might, alas! prove fatal.

Poor Stanchester! I pondered over his position, too—and I pitied him. Awakened from the temporary aberration which made him take as wife Lady Marigold Gordon, the racing girl and smart up-to-date maiden; conscious that the camaraderie of the billiard-room, the stable, and the shooting-party and the card-room was after all but a poor substitute for the true companionship of a wife. The young Countess, well-versed in French novels of doubtful taste, accomplished in manly sports, a good judge of a dog, capable of talking slang in and out of season, inured to cigarettes and strong drinks, had been an excellent “chum” for a short time, but she now preferred the freedom of her pre-matrimonial days, and drifted about wherever she could find pleasure and excitement. Indeed, she seemed to have more admirers now that she was the wife of the Earl of Stanchester than when she had been merely one of “the giddy Gordon girls.”

The smoky sunset haze had settled over the Thames as I crossed Westminster Bridge in search of the pawnbroker’s whose voucher had been found in the dead man’s pocket, and a copy of which I had obtained before leaving Sibberton. It had been a blazing August day and every Londoner who could afford to escape from the city’s turmoil was absent. Yet weather or season makes no appreciable difference to those hurrying millions who cross the bridges each evening to rush to their ’buses, trams or trains.

At six o’clock that summer’s evening the crowd was just as thick on Westminster Bridge as on any night in winter. The million or so of absent holidaymakers are unnoticed in that wild desperate fight for the daily necessaries of life.

Without difficulty I found the shop where a combined business of jeweller’s and pawnbroker’s was carried on, and having sought the proprietor, a fat man in shirt-sleeves, of pronounced Hebrew type, I requested to be allowed to see the 

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