d by acclamation a member of several fashionable
clubs, tried to retrieve himself at the gaming-table. Lastly, when money
matters at home and abroad, when the anxieties of his wife and the
altered manners of his acquaintance in and out of the House of Commons
grew more than usually disagreeable, a certain little chorus girl came
upon the scene and served to make both money and repentance scarcer even
than they were before. No story could be more commonplace or more
detestable.

"Ah, how well I remember that poor old fellow--old John Boyce," said
Lord Maxwell, slowly, shaking his stately white head over it, as he
leant talking and musing against the mantelpiece. "I saw him the day he
came back from the attempt to hush up the company business. I met him in
the road, and could not help pulling up to speak to him. I was so sorry
for him. We had been friends for many years, he and I. 'Oh, good God!'
he said, when he saw me. 'Don't stop me--don't speak to me!' And he
lashed his horse up--as white as a sheet--fat, fresh-coloured man that
he was in general--and was off. I never saw him again till after his
death. First came the trial, and Dick Boyce got three months'
imprisonment, on a minor count, while several others of the precious lot
he was mixed up with came in for penal servitude. There was some
technical flaw in the evidence with regard to him, and the clever
lawyers they put on made the most of it; but we all thought, and society
thought, that Dick was morally as bad as any of them. Then the papers
got hold of the gambling debts and the woman. She made a disturbance at
his club, I believe, during the trial, while he was out on bail--anyway
it all came out. Two or three other people were implicated in the
gambling business--men of good family. Altogether it was one of the
biggest scandals I remember in my time."

The old man paused, the long frowning face sternly set. Aldous gazed at
him in silence. It was certainly pretty bad--worse than he had thought.

"And the wife and child?" he said presently.

"Oh, poor things!"--said Lord Maxwell, forgetting everything for the
moment but his story--"when Boyce's imprisonment was up they disappeared
with him. His constituents held indignation meetings, of course. He gave
up his seat, and his father allowed him a small fixed income--she had
besides some little money of her own--which was secured him afterwards,
I believe, on the estate during his brother's lifetime. Some of her