your newspaper with one
hand, or had to stop a perfect stranger in the street, as I did just now
outside your door, and ask him to fish a cab-fare out of your right-hand
trouser-pocket if he'd be so good? because your idiot of a man ought to
have put your money in the other one."

"You're lookin' at my head," pursued the Major, "and I don't wonder. She's
been and given me a fringe again. 'Stonishing thing the Feminine Touch is.
Let your servant part your hair and knot your necktie, and you simply look
a filthy bounder. Your wife does it--and you hardly know yourself in the
glass, and wonder why they didn't christen you Anna-Maria. Not bad weeds
these, by half! You remember those cigars of Kreil's and the thunderin'
price me and Beauvayse paid for 'em, biddin' against each other for fun?"
The big man blew a heavy sigh with the light blue smoke-wreath, and added:
"And before the last box was dust and ashes, poor old Toby was! And that
chap Levestre--never fit to brown his shoes--is wearing 'em; and 'll be
Marquess of Foltlebarre when the old man goes. Queer thing, Luck is--when
you come to think of it?"

Saxham nodded and looked at the clock. A dull impatience of this large,
bland, prosperous personage was growing in him. From the rim the top-hat
had left upon his shining forehead to the tightly-screwed eyeglass that
assisted his left eye; from the pink Malmaison carnation in the buttonhole
of his frock-coat to the buff spats that matched his expansive waistcoat
in shade, the large Major was the personification of luxurious, pampered,
West End swelldom, the type of a class Saxham abhorred. He had seen the
heavy dandy under other conditions, in circumstances strenuous, severe,
even tragic. Then he had borne himself after a simple, manly fashion. Now
he had backslidden, retrograded, relaxed. Saxham, always destitute of the
saving sense of humour, frowned as he looked upon the pampered son of
Clubland, and the sullen lowering of the Doctor's heavy smudge of black
eyebrow suggested to the Major that his regrets for "poor old Toby!" had
been misplaced. The man who had married Miss Mildare could hardly be
expected to join with heartiness in deploring the untimely decease of his
predecessor.

"Not that it could have come to anything between poor Toby and her if the
dear old chap had lived," reflected Bingo, and wondered if the Doctor knew
about--about Lessie? "Bound to," he mentally decided, "if he keeps his
ears only half as