about the
place. I know I shall have an attack of nerves there."

"Mother always gets nerves if she mayn't talk," Sybil murmured.

"You're an undutiful daughter," Lady Caroom declared. "If I do talk I
never say anything, so nobody need listen unless they like. About this
entertainment, Arranmore. Are you going to make the wineglass
disappear and the apples fly about the room a la Maskelyne and Cook? I
hope our share in it consists in sitting down."

Arranmore turned to the butler behind his chair.

"Have coffee and liqueur served here, Groves, and bring some cigarettes.
Then you can send the servants away and leave us alone."

The man bowed.

"Very good, your lordship."

Lord Arranmore looked around at his guests.

"The entertainment," he said, "will incur no greater hardship upon you
than a little patience. I am going to tell you a story."

CHAPTER XX

THE CONFIDENCE OF LORD ARRANMORE

The servants had left the room, and the doors were fast closed. Lord
Arranmore sat a little forward in his high-backed chair, one hand
grasping the arm, the other stretched flat upon the table before him.
By his side, neglected, was a cedar-wood box of his favourite
cigarettes.

"I am going," he said, thoughtfully, "to tell you a story, of whom the
hero is--myself. A poor sort of entertainment perhaps, but then there
is a little tragedy and a little comedy in what I have to tell. And you
three are the three people in the world to whom certain things were
better told."

They bent forward, fascinated by the cold directness of his speech, by
the suggestion of strange things to come. The mask of their late gaiety
had fallen away. Lady Caroom, grave and sad-eyed, was listening with an
anxiety wholly unconcealed. Under the shaded lamplight their faces,
dominated by that cold masterly figure at the head of the table, were
almost Rembrandtesque.

"You have heard a string of incoherent but sufficiently damaging
accusations made against me to-day by a young lady whose very existence,
I may say, was a surprise to me. It suited me then to deny them.
Nevertheless they were in the main true."

The announcement was no shock. Every one of the three curiously enough
had believed the girl.

"I must go a little further back than the time of which she spoke. At
twenty-six years old I was an idle young man of good family, but scant
expectations, supposed to be studying at the Bar, but in reality idling
my time about town. In those