--

"If it isn't Mr. Pratt!"

He started. One of the very smartest of the little crowd who flowed
around him had paused before his chair. He rose to his feet.

"Lady Powers!" he exclaimed.

"Ancient history," she confided. "I have been married weeks--it seems
ages. This is my husband--Mr. Frank Lloyd."

Jacob found himself shaking hands with a vacuous-looking youth who
turned away again almost immediately to speak to some acquaintances.

"You don't bear me any ill-will, Mr. Pratt?"

"None except that broken dinner engagement," he replied.

"I wrote to you," she reminded him. "I did not dare to come after the
way those others had behaved."

He sighed. "All the same I was disappointed."

She made a little grimace. Her husband was bidding farewell to his
friends. She leaned towards him confidentially.

"Perhaps if I had," she whispered, "there would have been no Mr. Frank
Lloyd."...

Back to his chair and solitude. Jacob made his way presently through
the darkened rooms and passages to his own apartments, where a servant
was waiting for him, the evening papers were laid out, whisky and soda
and sandwiches were on the sideboard. His valet relieved him of his
dresscoat and smoothed the smoking jacket around him.

"Anything more I can do for you to-night, sir?"

Jacob looked around the empty room, looked at his luxurious single
easy-chair, at all the resources of comfort provided for him, and
shook his head.

"Nothing, Richards," he answered shortly. "Good night!"

"Good night, sir!"

Jacob subsided into the easy-chair, filled his pipe mechanically, lit
and smoked it mechanically, knocked out the ashes when he had finished
it, turned out the lights and passed into his bedroom, undressed and
went to bed, still without any interest or thought for what he was
doing. When he found himself still awake in a couple of hours' time,
he took himself to task fiercely.

"This is liver," he muttered. "I shall now relax, take twelve deep
breaths, and sleep."

Which he did.

CHAPTER XVI

Spring came, and Jacob found the monotony of life relieved by a
leisurely motor trip through the south of England, during which he
stopped to play golf occasionally at various well-known courses. He
returned to London in June, and on the second day of Ascot he came
across Felixstowe, for the first time since their meeting in Monte
Carlo. The young man's greeting was breezy and devoid of any
embarrassment. The little matt