"I was sent for to-day by the
Committee here upon the question of your candidature for the
club. They asked me a good many questions, which I answered
to the best of my ability, but you know they are a very
old-fashioned lot, and I think it would perhaps be wisest if
I were to withdraw your name for the present. This I propose
to do unless I hear from you to the contrary._

"_Sincerely yours,_
"_Gordon Chambers."_

Saton felt his cheeks flush as he thrust the letter to the bottom of
the little pile which stood in front of him. It was one more of the
little annoyances to which somehow or other he seemed at regular
intervals to be subjected. Latterly, things had begun to expand with
him. He had persuaded Madame to give up the old-fashioned house in
Regent's Park, and they had moved into a maisonette in Mayfair--a
little white-fronted house, with boxes full of scarlet geraniums, a
second man-servant to open the door, and an electric brougham in place
of the somewhat antiquated carriage, which the Countess had brought
with her from abroad. His banking account was entirely satisfactory.
There were many men and women who were only too pleased to welcome him
at their houses. And yet he was at all times subject to such an
occurrence as this.

His lips were twisted in an unpleasant smile as he frowned down upon
the tablecloth.

"It is always like it!" he muttered. "One climbs a little, and then
the stings come."

Madame entered the room, and took her place at the other end of the
breakfast table. She leaned upon her stick as she walked, and her face
seemed more than ever lined in the early morning sunlight. She wore a
dress of some soft black material, unrelieved by any patch of color,
against which her cheeks were almost ghastly in their pallor.

"The stings, Bertrand? What are they?" she asked, pouring herself out
some coffee.

Saton shrugged his shoulders.

"Nothing that you would understand," he answered coldly. "I mean that
you would not understand its significance. Nothing, perhaps, that I
ought not to be prepared for."

She looked across the table at him with cold expressionless eyes. To
see these two together in their moments of intimacy, no one would ever
imagine that her love for this boy--he was nothing more when chance
had thrown him in her way--had been the only real passion of her later
days.

"You do not know," she said, "wh