," he answered
bitterly. "I thought that, although you were a woman, you could allow me
the claim I make. It is small enough, God knows! Miss Campion, forgive
me for speaking so roughly. I ask most earnestly for your friendship and
your sympathy; will you not give me these?"

Lettice moved onward towards the door. "Do you think that we ought to
discuss our personal concerns in such a place as this?" she asked,
evading the question in a thoroughly feminine manner.

"Why not? But if not here, then in another place. By the bye"--with a
sudden change of manner, as they stepped into the light of day--"I have
a rare book that I want to show you. Will you let me bring it to your
house to-morrow morning? I think that you will be interested. May I
bring it?"

"Yes," said Lettice mechanically. The change from fierce earnestness to
this subdued conventionality of tone bewildered her a little.

"I will come at twelve, if that hour will suit you?"

"It will suit me very well."

And then he raised his hat and left her. Lettice, her pulses throbbing
strangely, took her way back to Hammersmith. As she grew calmer, she
wondered what had agitated her so much; it must have been something in
his look or in his tone, for every effort to assure herself by a
repetition of his words that they were mere commonplaces of conversation
set her heart beating more tumultuously than ever. She walked all the
way from Westminster to Brook Green without once reflecting that she
might save herself that fatigue by hailing a passing omnibus.

CHAPTER VIII.

AT THE OLIGARCHY CLUB.

Sydney Campion had done a year's hard and remunerative work since he
paid his last visit to Angleford, and the result more than answered his
expectations.

When the courts were sitting he was fully absorbed in his briefs; but
now and again he took life easily enough--at any rate, so far as the law
was concerned. In the autumn it had been his custom to live abroad for a
month or two; at Christmas and Easter he invariably found his way to his
club in the afternoon, and finished the evening over a rubber of whist.

It was a rare occasion when Sydney was able, in the middle of term, to
leave his chambers between three and four o'clock, and stroll in a
leisurely way along the Embankment, peacefully smoking a cigar. The
chance came to him one sultry day in June. There was no case for him to
master, nothing proceeding in which he was specially interested, and he
did