tinctive attraction for those poor souls who lead forlorn hopes, and
of whom--they being unsuccessful in their fine endeavours--the world
never hears. She also had a strange patience and tenderness for those
ne'er-do-wells of whom even the kindest grow weary after a time. Nan had
a mass of queer friends, old proteges for whom she worked unceasingly in
a curious, detached fashion, which was quite her own, and utterly apart
from any of the myriad philanthropic societies with which the world she
lived in, and to which she belonged by birth, interests its prosperous
and intelligent leisure.

It was characteristic that Nan's liking for John Coxeter often took the
form of asking him to help these queer, unsatisfactory people. Why, even
in this last week, while he had been in Paris, he had come into close
relation with one of Mrs. Archdale's "odd-come-shorts." This time the
man was an inventor, and of all unpractical and useless things he had
patented an appliance for saving life at sea!

Nan Archdale had given the man a note to Coxeter, and it was
characteristic of the latter that, while resenting what Mrs. Archdale
had done, he had been at some pains when in Paris to see the man in
question. The invention--as Coxeter had of course known would be the
case--was a ridiculous affair, but for Nan's sake he had agreed to
submit it to the Admiralty expert whose business it is to consider and
pronounce on such futile things. The queer little model which its maker
believed would in time supersede the life-belts now carried on every
British ship, had but one merit, it was small and portable: at the
present moment it lay curled up, looking like a cross between a
serpent's cast skin and a child's spent balloon, in Coxeter's
portmanteau. Even while he had accepted the parcel with a coolly civil
word of thanks, he had mentally composed the letter with which he would
ultimately dash the poor inventor's hopes.

To-night, however, sitting opposite to her, he felt glad that he had
been to see the man, and he looked forward to telling her about it.
Scarcely consciously to himself, it always made Coxeter glad to feel
that he had given Nan pleasure, even pleasure of which he disapproved.

And yet how widely apart were these two people's sympathies and
interests! Putting Nan aside, John Coxeter was only concerned with two
things in life--his work at the Treasury and himself--and people only
interested him in relation to these two major problem