e, I will ring the bell for my trap."

"You will do nothing of the sort," Wingrave answered testily. "You will
stay here and talk to me."

"I will stay with pleasure if you desire it," the lawyer answered. "I
had an idea that you preferred solitude."

"Then you were wrong," Wingrave answered. "I hate being alone."

They moved out together towards the garden. Tea was set out in a shady
corner of the lawn.

"If you will forgive my remarking it," Mr. Pengarth said, "this seems
rather an extraordinary place for you to come to if you really dislike
solitude."

"I come to escape from an intolerable situation, and because I was ill,"
Wingrave said.

"You might have brought friends," the lawyer suggested.

"I have no friends," Wingrave answered.

"Some of the people in the neighborhood would be very glad--" Mr.
Pengarth began.

"I do not wish to see them," Wingrave answered.

Mr. Pengarth took a peach, and held his tongue. Wingrave broke the
silence which followed a little abruptly.

"Tell me, Mr. Pengarth," he said, "do I look like a man likely to fail
in anything he sets out to accomplish?"

The lawyer shook his head vigorously.

"You do not," he declared.

"Nor do I feel like one," Wingrave said, "and yet my record since I
commenced, shall I call it my second life, is one of complete failure!
Nothing that I planned have I been able to accomplish. I look back
through the months and through the years, and I see not a single purpose
carried out, not a single scheme successful.

"Not quite so bad as that, I trust, Sir Wingrave," the lawyer protested.

"It is the precise truth," Wingrave affirmed drily. "I am losing
confidence in myself."

"At least," the lawyer declared, "you have been the salvation of our
dear Miss Juliet, if I may call her so. But for you, her life would have
been ruined."

"Precisely," Wingrave agreed. "But I forgot! You don't understand! I
have saved her from heaven knows what! I am going to give her the home
she loves! Benevolence, isn't it? And yet, if I had only the pluck, I
might succeed even now--so far as she is concerned."

The lawyer took off his spectacles and rubbed them with his
handkerchief. He was thoroughly bewildered.

"I might succeed," Wingrave repeated, leaning back in his chair, "if
only--"

His face darkened. It seemed to Mr. Pengarth as he sipped his tea under
the cool cedars, drawing in all their wonderful perfume with every puff
of breeze, that he saw two