low let his jaw fall slightly; he gazed at the nobleman
with mingled shrewdness and admiration. "Your lordship remembers him
_only_," with an accent, "as a patron of sport. Tossed a quid on
him"--with a look of full meaning--"as your lordship would a bone to a
dog. Perhaps," gaining in audacity, "your lordship would be so generous
as to throw one or two now at one he once favored with his bounty."

"I--favored you? You lie!" The answer was concise; it cut like a lash;
it robbed the man once more of all his hardihood. He slunk back.

"Very good," he muttered.

Lord Ronsdale turned and with a sharp swish of his cane walked on. The
other, his eyes resentfully bright, looked after the tall, aristocratic,
slowly departing figure.

As the nobleman ascended the steps of his club he seemed again to be
thinking deeply; within, his preoccupation did not altogether desert
him. In a corner, with the big pages of the _Times_ before him, he read
with scant interest the doings of the day; even a perennial telegram
concerning a threatened invasion of England did not awaken momentary
interest. He passed it over as casually as he did the markets, or a
grudging, conservative item from the police courts, all that the blue
pencil had left of the hopeful efforts of some poor penny-a-liner. From
the daily fulminator he had turned to the weekly medium of fun and
fooling, when, from behind another paper, the face of a gray-haired,
good-natured appearing person, quite different off the bench, chanced to
look out at him.

"Eh? That you, Ronsdale?" he said, reaching for a steaming glass of hot
beverage at his elbow. "What do you think of it, this talk of an
invasion by the Monseers?"

"Don't think anything of it."

"Answered in the true spirit of a Briton!" laughed the other. "I fancy,
too, it'll be a long time before John Bull ceases to stamp around,
master of his own shores, or Britannia no longer rules the deep. But how
is your friend, Sir Charles Wray? I had the pleasure of meeting him the
other morning in the court room."

"Same as usual, I imagine, Judge Beeson."

"And his fair niece, she takes kindly to the town and its gaieties?"

"Very kindly," dryly.

"A beautiful girl, our young Australian!" The elder man toyed with his
glass, stirred the contents and sipped. "By the way, didn't I see John
Steele in their box at the opera the other night?"

"It is possible," shortly.

"Rising man, that!" observed the other lightly. "Comb