makes my blood boil when I think of it!" "Think of what?" "Of the persistent ill luck which has dogged my uncle throughout his life. Of the odious—well, not suspicion, it is not so definite as that—which seems to surround him. I was at Lady Oxted's the other night, and mentioned him casually, but she said nothing and changed the subject. Oh, it was not a mere chance; the thing has happened before." Geoffrey squirted some soda water into his glass. "Suspicion! what do you mean?" he asked. "No; suspicion is the wrong word. Uncle Francis told me all about his life on the last evening that I was at Vail, and I never heard anything so touching, so cruel, or so dignified. All his life he has been the victim of an ill luck so persistent that it looks as if some malignant power must have been pursuing him. Well, I am going to try to make it up to him. I wonder if a rather long and very private story about his affairs would interest you at all?" [Pg 46] [Pg 46] "Rather. I should like to hear it." "Well, this is almost exactly as he told it me, from the beginning. He was a twin of my grandfather's; there's a piece of bad luck to start with, and being just half a minute late about coming into the world, he is a younger son, which is no fun, I can tell you, in our impoverished family." "That may happen to anybody," said Geoffrey; "I'm a younger son myself, but I don't scream over that." Harry laughed. "Nor does he. Don't interrupt, Geoff. Then he married a very rich girl, who died three years afterward, childless, leaving all her money back to her own relatives. It was a most unhappy marriage from the first; but don't aim after cheap cynicism, and say that the real tragedy there was not her death, but the disposition of her property. I can tell you beforehand that this was not the case. He was devoted to her." "Well?" Harry's voice sank. "And then, twenty-two years ago, came that awful affair of young Harmsworth's death. Did you ever hear it spoken of?" Geoffrey was silent a moment.
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