ry of a certain event, and
I know you. It is, I suppose, for this end that you made use of them."

Wingrave nodded.

"Quite right," he declared. "I think that the time is not far off when
that dear lady and I can cry quits. This time, too, I see nothing to
impair my satisfaction at the probable finale. In various other cases,
as you might remember, I have not been entirely successful."

"It depends," Aynesworth remarked drily, "upon what you term success."

Wingrave shrugged his shoulders.

"I think," he said coldly, "that you are aware of what my feelings and
desired course of action have been with regard to those of my fellow
creatures with whom I have happened to come into contact. It seems to me
that I have been a trifle unfortunate in several instances."

"As for instance?" Aynesworth asked.

"Well, to take a few cases only," Wingrave continued, "there was the
child down at Tredowen whom you were so anxious for me to befriend. Of
course, I declined to do anything of the sort, and she ought, by rights,
to have gone to some charitable institution, founded and supported by
fools, and eventually become, perhaps, a domestic servant. Instead
of which, some relation of her father turns up and provides for her
lavishly. You must admit that that was unfortunate."

"It depends upon the point of view," Aynesworth remarked drily.
"Personally, I considered it a most fortunate occurrence."

"Naturally," Wingrave agreed. "But then you are a sentimentalist. You
like to see people happy, and you would even help to make them so if you
could without any personal inconvenience. I am at the other pole. If I
could collect humanity into one sentient force, I would set my heel upon
it without hesitation. I try to do what I can with the atoms, but I have
not the best of fortune. There was Mrs. Travers, now! There I should
have been successful beyond a doubt if some busybody hadn't sent that
cable to her husband. I wonder if you were idiot enough to do that,
Aynesworth?"

"If I had thought of the Marconigram," Aynesworth said, "I am sure I
should have done it. But as a matter of fact, I did not."

"Just as well, so far as our relations are concerned," Wingrave said
coldly. "I did manage to make poor men of a few brokers in New York,
but my best coup went wrong. That boy would have blown his brains out,
I believe, if some meddling idiot hadn't found him all that money at the
last moment. I have had a few smaller successes, of cou