you in that matter," he added,
glancing towards the envelope, "I shall be very pleased."

She sighed gratefully.

"Just till Victor's people return to town," she said. "I know that they
mean to do something for me."

"How much?" he asked.

"Two hundred pounds would keep me going," she told him.

He wrote out a cheque. Miss Hyslop drew a sigh of relief as she laid it
on one side with the envelope. Then she swung round in her chair to face
him where he sat at the writing-table.

"I am afraid you will think that what I have to tell is very
insignificant," she confessed. "Victor was one of those boys who always
fancied themselves bored. He was bored with polo, bored with motoring,
bored with the country and bored with town. Then quite suddenly during
the last few weeks he seemed changed. All that he would tell me was
that he had found a new interest in life. I don't know what it was but
I don't think it was a nice one. He seemed to drop all his old friends,
too, and go about with a new set altogether--not a nice set at all. He
used to stay out all night, and he quite gave up going to dances
and places where he could take me. Once or twice he came here in the
afternoon, dead beat, without having been to bed at all, and before he
could say half-a-dozen words he was asleep in my easy-chair. He used to
mutter such horrible things that I had to wake him up."

"Was he ever short of money?" Francis asked.

She shook her head.

"Not seriously," she answered. "He was quite well-off, besides what his
people allowed him. I was going to have a wonderful settlement as soon
as our engagement was announced. However, to go on with what I was
telling you, the very night before--it happened--he came in to see me,
looking like nothing on earth. He cried like a baby, behaved like a
lunatic, and called himself all manner of names. He had had a great deal
too much to drink, and I gathered that he had seen something horrible.
It was then he asked me to dine with him the next night, and told me
that he was going to break altogether with his new friends. Something in
connection with them seemed to have given him a terrible fright."

Francis nodded. He had the tact to abandon his curiosity at this precise
point.

"The old story," he declared, "bad company and rotten habits. I suppose
some one got to know that the young man usually carried a great deal of
money about with him."

"It was so foolish of him," she assented eagerly: "I warn