gely enough he
did not at once impart it to Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence.

All through the year, John Turner had kept his client supplied with
ready money. He had, moreover, made no change in his own mode of living.
Which things are a mystery to all who have no money of their own nor
the good fortune to handle other people's. There is no doubt some
explanation of the fact that bankers and other financiers seem to fail,
and even become bankrupt, without tangible effect upon their daily
comfort, but the unfinancial cannot expect to understand it.

There had, as a matter of fact, been no question of discomfort for Mrs.
St. Pierre Lawrence either.

"Can I spend as much as I like?" she had asked Turner, and his reply had
been in the affirmative.

"No use in saving?"

"None whatever," he replied. To which Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence made
answer that she did not understand things at all.

"It is no use collecting straws against a flood," the banker answered,
sleepily.

There was, of course, no question now of supplying the necessary
funds to the Marquis de Gemosac and Albert de Chantonnay, who, it was
understood, were raising the money, not without difficulty, elsewhere.
Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence had indeed heard little or nothing of her
Royalist friends in the west. Human nature is the same, it would appear,
all the world over, but the upper crust is always the hardest.

When Colville was informed of the rumour, he remembered that he had
never quarrelled with John Turner. He had, of course, said some hard
things in the heat of the moment, but Turner had not retorted. There was
no quarrel. Colville, therefore, took an early opportunity of lunching
at the club then reputed to have the best chef in Paris. He went late
and found that the majority of members had finished dejeuner and were
taking coffee in one or other of the smoking-rooms.

After a quick and simple meal, Colville lighted a cigarette and went
upstairs. There were two or three small rooms where members smoked or
played cards or read the newspapers, and in the quietest of these
John Turner was alone, asleep. Colville walked backward into the room,
talking loudly as he did so with a friend in the passage. When well over
the threshold he turned: John Turner, whose slumbers had been rudely
disturbed, was sitting up rubbing his eyes. The surprise was of course
mutual, and for a moment there was an awkward pause; then, with a smile
of frank good-fellowship, Colville ad