t, black tie, and wide-awake,
taking his constitutional along the Woodstock road, or playing a mild
game of croquet in the professorial garden; or he recalled him among his
gems--those rare and beautiful things, bought with the savings of a
lifetime, loved, each of them, for its own sake, and bequeathed at death,
with the tender expression of a wish--no tyrannical condition!--to
the orphan boy whom he had fathered.

The thought of what would--what must be--Uncle Mackworth's judgment on
his present position, was perhaps the most tormenting element in
Faversham's consciousness. He faced it, however, with frankness. His
uncle would have condemned him--wholly. The notion of serving a bad man,
for money, would have been simply inconceivable to that straight and
innocent soul. Are there not still herbs to be eaten under hedgerows,
with the sauce of liberty and self-respect?

No doubt. But man is entitled to self-fulfilment; and men pursue vastly
different ways of obtaining it. The perplexities of practical ethics are
infinite; and mixed motives fit a mixed world.

At least he had not bartered away his uncle's treasure. The gems still
stood to him as the symbol of something he had lost, and might some day
recover. It was really time he got them out of Melrose's clutches...

...The room was oppressively hot! It was a raw December night, but the
heating system of the Tower was now so perfect, and to Faversham's mind
so excessive, that every corner of the large house was bathed in a
temperature which seemed to keep Melrose alive, while it half suffocated
every other inmate.

Suddenly the telephone bell on his writing-desk rang. His room was now
connected with Melrose's room, at the other end of the house, as well as
with Pengarth. He put his ear to the receiver.

"Yes?"

"I want to speak to you."

He rose unwillingly. But at least he could air the room, which he would
not have ventured to do, if Melrose were coming to him as usual for the
ten minutes' hectoring, which now served as conversation between them,
before bedtime. Going to the window which gave access to the terrace
outside, he unclosed the shutters, and threw open the glass doors. He
perceived that it had begun to rain, and that the night was darkening. He
stood drinking in the moist coolness of the air for a few seconds, and
then leaving the window open, and forgetting to extinguish the electric
light on his table he went out of the room.

He found Melrose