aving the brain of a surveyor, he was
sent through by-streets that saved a few yards, perhaps, but cost him
many minutes in stopping to inquire the way. Hence, he missed an
amazing sight. The merest glimpse of Count Edouard Marigny's new
acquaintance would surely have pulled him up, if it did not put an end
to the tour forthwith. But that was not to be. Blissfully unconscious
of the fact that the Frenchman was eagerly explaining to a dignified
yet strangely perturbed old gentleman that the car Number X L
4000--containing a young American lady and her friend, and driven by a
conceited puppy of a chauffeur who suffered badly from _tete
montee_--had just gone up the hill to the left, Medenham at last
reached the open road, and the Mercury leaped forward as if Gloucester
would hardly wait till it arrived there.

The old gentleman had only that minute alighted from a station cab,
and a question he addressed to the hall-porter led that civil
functionary to refer him to Marigny "as a friend of the parties
concerned."

But the newcomer drew himself up somewhat stiffly when the foreign
personage spoke of Medenham as a "puppy."

"Before our conversation proceeds any farther I think I ought to tell
you that I am the Earl of Fairholme and that Viscount Medenham is my
son," he said.

Marigny looked so blank at this that the Earl's explanation took fresh
shape.

"I mean," he went on, perceiving that his hearer was none the wiser,
"I mean that the chauffeur you allude to is Viscount Medenham."

Marigny, though born on the banks of the Loire, was a Southern
Frenchman by descent, and the hereditary tint of olive in his skin
became prominent only when his emotions were aroused. Now the pink and
white of his complexion was tinged with yellowish-green. Never before
in his life had he been quite so surprised--never.

"He--he said his name was Fitzroy," was all he could gasp.

"So it is--the dog. Took the family name and dropped his title in
order to go gallivanting about the country with this young person....
An American, I am told--and with that detestable creature, Mrs. Devar!
Nice thing! No wonder Lady Porthcawl was shocked. May I ask, sir, who
_you_ are?"

Lord Fairholme was very angry, and not without good reason. He had
traveled from London at an absurdly early hour in response to the
urgent representations of Susan, Lady St. Maur, to whom her intimate
friend, Millicent Porthcawl, had written a thrilling account of the
go