ncomfortable, and he determined to set to
work to reassure himself. (The clergyman, he noticed, was beginning to
doze a little by the fire, for the club had just been officially closed
and the rooms were empty.)

Of course, it was not pleasant to have to tell a young man that his
father and brother were dead (Dick himself was conscious of a
considerable shock), but surely the situation was, on the whole,
enormously improved. This morning Frank was a pauper; to-night he was
practically a millionaire, as well as a peer of the realm. This morning
his friends had nothing by which they might appeal to him, except common
sense and affection, and Frank had very little of the one, and, it would
seem, a very curious idea of the other.

Of course, all that affair about Jenny was a bad business (Dick could
hardly even now trust himself to think of her too much, and not to
discuss her at all), but Frank would get over it.

Then, still walking up and down, and honestly reassured by sheer reason,
he began to think of what part Jenny would play in the future.... It was
a very odd situation, a very odd situation indeed. (The deliberate and
self-restrained Dick used an even stronger expression.) Here was a young
woman who had jilted the son and married the father, obviously from
ambitious motives, and now found herself almost immediately in the
position of a very much unestablished kind of dowager, with the jilted
son reigning in her husband's stead. And what on earth would happen
next? Diamonds had been trumps; now it looked as if hearts were to
succeed them; and what a very remarkable pattern was that of these
hearts.

But to come back to Frank--

And at that moment he heard a noise at the door, and, as the clergyman
started up from his doze, Dick saw the towzled and becapped head of the
unemployed man and his hand beckoning violently, and heard his hoarse
voice adjuring them to make haste. The gentleman under the arch, he
said, was signaling.

The scene was complete when the two arrived, with the unemployed man
encouraging them from behind, half a minute later under the archway.

Jack had faced Frank fairly and squarely on the further pavement, and
was holding him in talk.

"My dear chap," he was saying, "we've been waiting for you all day.
Thank the Lord you've come!"

Frank looked a piteous sight, thought Dick, who now for the first time
saw the costume that Mr. Parham-Carter had described with such
minuteness. He was s