old."

"You needn't. I have already heard. Lady Leake is, I believe, your
second wife, and you have two sons."

"No--three," he corrected. "Henry, my eldest, who is twenty-four and
is the only survivor of the children of my first and most unhappy
marriage; Curzon, who is just entering his twenty-first year, and
Bevis, who has not yet turned seven, and is, of course, still in
the nursery. I may as well admit to you, Mr. Cleek, that my first
marriage was a failure; that it was none of my own choosing, but was
consummated in deference to the will and wishes of my parents. We
were utterly unsuited to each other, my first wife and I, and it is,
no doubt, only natural that the son she left me when death delivered
us both from an irksome bondage should reflect in himself some
of those points of difference which made our union a mistake.

"Don't misunderstand me, however. He is very dear to me--dear, too,
to his stepmother, who loves him as her own, and the one strong
feature in his character is the love he gives her in return. Then,
too, he is my first born, my heir, and no man fails to love that
first child that ever called him father."

"No man could fail to love this particular one at all events, Mr.
Cleek," put in her ladyship. "Wild, reckless, extravagant--yes! But
at heart, the dearest boy!"

"Just so!" interposed Cleek. "But let us get on, please. So this
'dearest boy' had an unpleasant interview with you the day before
yesterday, did he, Sir Mawson? What was it about?"

"The usual thing--money. He is extravagant to the point of insanity.
I've paid his debts until my patience is quite worn out, hoping
against hope that he will reform. At that interview, however, he
asked for a thing I would _not_ listen to--L200 to settle a
gambling debt at his club: to take up an I. O. U. that would get
him blacklisted as a defaulter if it were not met. 'Then get
blacklisted!' I said to him, 'if there's no other way to cut you off
from the worthless lot you associate yourself with. You'll not
get one farthing from me to settle any such disgraceful thing as a
gambling debt, rest assured of that!' Then I walked out of the
room and left him, and that was the last I saw of him until he
pounced upon me in the hall yesterday when I was going to my
study with the case containing the Ranee's necklace.

"That was the subject he wanted to renew. He'd been to town, he
said, and had had a talk with the man to whom he had given the
I. O.