e seen me sometimes wear! You know it's
the sort of thing wicked women affect when they want to be cynical
about the marriage tie. Well, Laura is doing her best to persuade me
to be the instrument of Mr. Ingram's reform. She thinks it such a pity
his life has not been so wholesome in tone as his novels. Her
admiration of him is so great that she wants him to live up to her
conception of the author of his novels, and I am to be sacrificed for
the purpose. She is ten years my senior, and you will observe her
interest in me is quite maternal. But I must tell you more about it
another time. The doctor's looking bored. I must go and amuse him."

CHAPTER III.

Shortly after midnight Morgan and Ingram were driving towards
Hampstead, in which vicinity, the latter explained, resided the lady
upon whom they were going to call. For a long time the two sat
silent--they seemed to have nothing to say to each other.

And even while Morgan was thrilled through and through with expectancy
of romance, he could not help his brain playing a little with the
general position, which, in face of what he had learnt to-night, was
far more complicated than he had imagined. He smiled as it occurred to
him how easily he could annoy Ingram by marrying Helen. Curious, he
thought, that Ingram had not the least suspicion of it!

"May I not ask who is the lady?" he said at last.

"She is nobody in particular," said Ingram. "I call her 'Cleo,' which
is sufficient for all practical purposes. There is really no reason
why I should not tell you now that Cleo, in fact, has been the
companion of my leisure for the past six years. I will leave you to
form your own impression of her."

Ingram spoke with an exaggerated air of bluntness, as if to indicate
his indifference to whatever effect his statement might produce on
Morgan. The latter, however, was not very much surprised. His active
feeling was rather one of bewilderment as to the part Ingram was
playing in this tangle of relations. The fact that Ingram had turned
up as a suitor for Helen's hand, when he himself had been all these
years in active relation with either unknown to the other, had
exhausted all the possibilities of astonishment in him. But he found
it strange that Ingram, in spite of his matrimonial intention, should
still continue on such terms with this 'Cleo' as to be able to bring a
friend to see her in the way he was doing now. Ingram's very readiness
to fall in with the sugg