nade during
the interval he nodded and smiled a little awkwardly to a tall,
good-looking young fellow in evening dress, whose bronzed skin, square
shoulders and easy stride gave one the idea that he was a good deal more
accustomed to the free and easy costume of the Bush or the Veld or the
Mining Camp than to the swallow-tails and starched linen of after-dinner
Civilisation.

"What a splendid-looking fellow!" said Dora, turning her head slightly
as he passed; "the sort of man, I should say, who really _is_ a man. Who
is he, Bernard? You seem to know him!"

"That man?" said Mr. Falcon. "Well, come down into the lower bar, and
we'll have a drink, and I'll tell you."

"That looks a little bit as if you didn't want to meet him again!" said
Dora, a trifle maliciously. "Does he happen to be one of your clients,
or someone who only knows you as a perfectly respectable person?"

Mr. Falcon did not reply immediately, but he frowned a little, as if he
didn't find the remark very palatable. But when they reached the
seclusion of the bar and sat down at one of the tables he said:

"Well, yes, it is something like that. The fact is we have done a little
business for him, and we hope to do more. Lucky beggar, he's one of
Fortune's darlings."

"That sounds interesting," said Carol. "May I ask what the good lady has
done for him?"

"Well," said Mr. Falcon, folding his hands on the table and dropping his
voice to a discreet monotone, "in the first place she made him the
younger son of a very good family. Nothing much to begin with, of
course, but then she also gave him a maiden aunt who left him five
thousand pounds just after he left Cambridge in disgust after failing
three times to get a pass degree. He had no special turn for anything in
particular except riding and shooting and athletics of all sorts. So,
like a sensible fellow, instead of stopping in England and fooling his
money away, as too many younger sons do, he put four thousand pounds
into my partner's hands--Lambe, I should tell you, was his aunt's
solicitor--to be invested in good securities, put the other thousand
into his pocket, and started out to seek his fortune.

"That's a little over five years ago, which makes him about thirty now.
Of course, I suppose he went everywhere and did everything, as such
fellows do, but we heard very little of him, and he never drew a penny
of the four thousand pounds, and he turned up in London a week or two
ago something more