n waiting on the mantel-shelf
for the last month, till I had an opportunity of drawing your attention
to them. I am sure we perfectly understand each other. No name need be
mentioned. All scandal is avoided. I feel confident you will not
hesitate to make me the only reparation one man can make another in the
somewhat hackneyed circumstances in which we find ourselves."

Lord Newhaven took the lighters out of the glass. He glanced suddenly at
Hugh's stunned face and went on:

"I am sorry the idea is not my own. I read it in a magazine. Though
comparatively modern, it promises soon to become as customary as the
much-to-be-regretted pistols for two and coffee for four. I hold the
lighters thus, and you draw. Whoever draws or keeps the short one is
pledged to leave this world within four months, or shall we say five, on
account of the pheasant shooting? Five be it. Is it agreed? Just so!
Will you draw?"

A swift spasm passed over Hugh's face, and a tiger glint leaped into
Lord Newhaven's eyes, fixed intently upon him.

There was a brief second in which Hugh's mind wavered, as the flame of a
candle wavers in a sudden draught. Lord Newhaven's eyes glittered. He
advanced the lighters an inch nearer.

If he had not advanced them that inch Hugh thought afterwards that he
would have refused to draw.

He backed against the mantel-piece, and then put out his hand suddenly
and drew. It seemed the only way of escape.

The two men measured the lighters on the table under the electric light.

Lord Newhaven laughed.

Hugh stood a moment, and then went out.

CHAPTER III

"Is it well with thee? Is it well with thy husband?"

When Lady Newhaven slipped out of the supper-room after her husband and
Hugh, and lingered at the door of the study, she did not follow them
with the deliberate intention of eavesdropping, but from a vague impulse
of suspicious anxiety. Yet she crouched in her white satin gown against
the door listening intently.

Neither man moved within, only one spoke. There was no other sound to
deaden her husband's distinct, low voice. The silence that followed his
last words, "Will you draw?" was broken by his laugh, and she had barely
time to throw herself back from the door into a dark recess under the
staircase before Hugh came out. He almost touched her as he passed. He
must have seen her, if he had been capable of seeing anything; but he
went straight on unheeding. And as she stole a few steps t