ere should arise the poor,
primeval brute, in his neolithic wrath, to seize on the man to blame,
and break every bone and sinew in his damned body."

"The newspapers would enjoy that more than she would," answered
Sir Nigel. "She does not like the newspapers. They are too ready
to disparage the multi-millionaire, and cackle about members of his
family."

The unhidden hatred which still professed to hide itself in the depths
of their pupils, as they regarded each other, had its birth in a passion
as elemental as the quakings of the earth, or the rage of two lions in
a desert, lashing their flanks in the blazing sun. It was well that at
this moment they should part ways.

Sir Nigel's horse being brought, he went on the way which was his.

"It was a mistake to say what I did," he said before going. "I ought to
have held my tongue. But I am under the same roof with her. At any rate,
that is a privilege no other man shares with me."

He rode off smartly, his horse's hoofs splashing in the rain pools left
in the avenue after the storm. He was not so sure after all that he
had made a mistake, and for the moment he was not in the mood to care
whether he had made one or not. His agreeable smile showed itself as he
thought of the obstinate, proud brute he had left behind, sitting alone
among his shut doors and closed corridors. They had not shaken hands
either at meeting or parting. Queer thing it was--the kind of enmity a
man could feel for another when he was upset by a woman. It was amusing
enough that it should be she who was upsetting him after all these
years--impudent little Betty, with the ferocious manner.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

AT SHANDY'S

On a late-summer evening in New York the atmosphere surrounding a
certain corner table at Shandy's cheap restaurant in Fourteenth Street
was stirred by a sense of excitement.

The corner table in question was the favourite meeting place of a group
of young men of the G. Selden type, who usually took possession of it at
dinner time--having decided that Shandy's supplied more decent food
for fifty cents, or even for twenty-five, than was to be found at other
places of its order. Shandy's was "about all right," they said to each
other, and patronised it accordingly, three or four of them generally
dining together, with a friendly and adroit manipulation of "portions"
and "half portions" which enabled them to add variety to their bill of
fare.

The street outside was lighted,