r yourselves.
I find him interesting enough."

"The whole thing," the editor declared, "will fizzle out. You see if
it doesn't? A man who's just spent ten or twelve years in prison isn't
likely to run any risk of going there again. There will be no tragedy;
more likely reconciliation."

"Perhaps," Aynesworth said imperturbably. "But it wasn't only the
possibility of anything of that sort happening, you know, which
attracted me. It was the tragedy of the man himself, with his numbed,
helpless life, set down here in the midst of us, with a great, blank
chasm between him and his past. What is there left to drive the wheels?
The events of one day are simple and monotonous enough to us, because
they lean up against the events of yesterday, and the yesterdays before!
How do they seem, I wonder, to a man whose yesterday was more than a
decade of years ago!"

The editor nodded.

"It must be a grim sensation," he admitted, "but I am afraid with you,
my dear Walter, it is an affair of shop. You wish to cull from your
interesting employer the material for that every-becoming novel of
yours. Let's go upstairs! I've time for one pool."

"I haven't," Aynesworth answered. "I've a commission to do."

He left the club and walked westwards, humming softly to himself, but
thinking all the time intently. His errand disturbed him. He was to be
the means of bringing together again these two people who had played the
principal parts in Lovell's drama--his new employer and the woman who
had ruined his life. What was the object of it? What manner of vengeance
did he mean to deal out to her? Lovell's words of premonition returned
to him just then with curious insistence--he was so certain that
Wingrave's reappearance would lead to tragical happenings. Aynesworth
himself never doubted it. His brief interview with the man into whose
service he had almost forced himself had impressed him wonderfully. Yet,
what weapon was there, save the crude one of physical force, with which
Wingrave could strike?

He rang the bell at No. 13, Cadogan Street, and sent in his card by the
footman. The man accepted it doubtfully.

"Her ladyship has only just got up from luncheon, sir, and she is not
receiving this afternoon," he announced.

Aynesworth took back his card, and scribbled upon it the name of the
newspaper for which he still occasionally worked.

"Her ladyship will perhaps see me," he said, handing the card back to
the man. "It is a matter of