Royal
houses. This business is getting exceedingly interesting, Duncombe!"

But Duncombe was thinking of the empty room.

BOOK II

CHAPTER I

GUY POYNTON AGAIN

"I Suppose," the boy said thoughtfully, "I must seem to you beastly
ungrateful. You've been a perfect brick to me ever since that night. But
I can't help being a bit homesick. You see, it was really the first time
I'd ever been away from home for long, and though my little place isn't
a patch on this, of course, still, I was born there, and I'm jolly fond
of it."

His companion nodded, and his dark eyes rested for a moment upon the
other's face. Guy Poynton was idly watching the reapers at work in the
golden valley below, and he did not catch his friend's expression.

"You are very young, _mon cher ami_," he said. "As one grows older one
demands change. Change always of scene and occupation. Now I, too, am
most hideously bored here, although it is my home. For me to live is
only possible in Paris--Paris, the beautiful."

Guy looked away from the fields. He resented a little his friend's air
of superiority.

"There's only a year's difference in our ages!" he remarked.

Henri de Bergillac smiled--this time more expressively than ever, and
held out his hands.

"I speak of experience, not years," he said. "You have lived for twenty
years in a very delightful spot no doubt, but away from everything which
makes life endurable, possible even, for the child of the cities. I have
lived for twenty-one years mostly in Paris. Ah, the difference!"

Guy shrugged his shoulders, and leaned back in his chair.

"Well," he said briefly, "tastes differ. I've seen quite all I want to
of Paris for the rest of my life. Give me a fine June morning in the
country, and a tramp round the farm, or an early morning start in
September walking down the partridges, or a gray day in November with a
good gee underneath, plenty of grass ahead, and hounds talking. Good
God, I wish I were back in England."

Henri smiled and caressed his upper lip, where symptoms of a moustache
were beginning to appear.

"My dear Guy," he said, "you speak crudely because you do not
understand. You know of Paris only its grosser side. How can one learn
more when he cannot even speak its language? You know the Paris of the
tourist. The real magic of my beautiful city has never entered into your
heart. Your little dabble in its vices and frivolities must not count to
you as anything fi