e recumbent figure.

"Only my knee. The beggars! They precious nearly choked me, though."

CHAPTER VII

Bertie Caradoc, leaving the smoking-room at Monkland Court that same
evening,--on his way to bed, went to the Georgian corridor, where his pet
barometer was hanging. To look at the glass had become the nightly habit
of one who gave all the time he could spare from his profession to
hunting in the winter and to racing in the summer.'

The Hon. Hubert Caradoc, an apprentice to the calling of diplomacy, more
completely than any living Caradoc embodied the characteristic strength
and weaknesses of that family. He was of fair height, and wiry build.
His weathered face, under sleek, dark hair, had regular, rather small
features, and wore an expression of alert resolution, masked by
impassivity. Over his inquiring, hazel-grey eyes the lids were almost
religiously kept half drawn. He had been born reticent, and great,
indeed, was the emotion under which he suffered when the whole of his
eyes were visible. His nose was finely chiselled, and had little flesh.
His lips, covered by a small, dark moustache, scarcely opened to emit his
speeches, which were uttered in a voice singularly muffled, yet
unexpectedly quick. The whole personality was that of a man practical,
spirited, guarded, resourceful, with great power of self-control, who
looked at life as if she were a horse under him, to whom he must give way
just so far as was necessary to keep mastery of her. A man to whom ideas
were of no value, except when wedded to immediate action; essentially
neat; demanding to be 'done well,' but capable of stoicism if necessary;
urbane, yet always in readiness to thrust; able only to condone the
failings and to compassionate the kinds of distress which his own
experience had taught him to understand. Such was Miltoun's younger
brother at the age of twenty-six.

Having noted that the glass was steady, he was about to seek the
stairway, when he saw at the farther end of the entrance-hall three
figures advancing arm-in-arm. Habitually both curious and wary, he
waited till they came within the radius of a lamp; then, seeing them to
be those of Miltoun and a footman, supporting between them a lame man, he
at once hastened forward.

"Have you put your knee out, sir? Hold on a minute! Get a chair,
Charles."

Seating the stranger in this chair, Bertie rolled up the trouser, and
passed his fingers round the knee. There w