gned it with the pen with which
Lord Loudwater had endorsed the cheque. He put the cheque into the
envelope he had already addressed, put stamps on all the letters, carried
them to the post-box on a table in the hall, went through the library out
into the garden, and smoked a cigarette with a somewhat languid air. Then
he went into the library and took up his task of cataloguing the books at
the point at which he had stopped the day before. He often paused to dip
at length into a book before entering it in the catalogue. He did not
believe in hasty work.

CHAPTER II

Lord Loudwater came to lunch in a better temper than that in which he had
left the breakfast-table. He had ridden eight miles round and about his
estate, and the ride had soothed that seat of the evil humours--his
liver. Lady Loudwater had been careful to shut Melchisidec in her
boudoir; James Hutchings had no desire in the world to see his master's
florid face or square back, and had instructed Wilkins and Holloway, the
first and second footmen, to wait at table. Lord Loudwater therefore
could, without any ruffling of his sensibilities, give all his thought to
his food, and he did. The cooking at the castle was always excellent. If
it was not, he sent for the chef and spoke to him about it.

There was little conversation at lunch. Lady Loudwater never spoke to her
husband first, save on rare occasions about a matter of importance. It
was not that she perceived any glamour of royalty about him; she did not
wish to hear his voice. Besides, she had never found a conversational
opening so harmless that he could not contrive, were it his whim, to be
offensive about it. Besides, she had at the moment nothing to say to him.

In truth, owing to the fact that she took so many practically silent
meals with him, she was becoming rather a gourmet. The food, naturally
the most important fact, had become really the most important fact at the
meals they took together. She had come to realize this. It was the only
advantage she had ever derived from her intercourse with her husband.

At this lunch, however, she did not pay as much attention to the food as
usual, not indeed as much as it deserved. Her mind would stray from it to
Colonel Grey. She wondered what he would tell her about herself that
afternoon. He was always discovering possibilities in her which she had
never discovered for herself. She only perceived their existence when he
pointed them out to he