ation had, however, done more to make him a place
in that guarded fortress than all Mrs. Rhodes's praises had effected.

A little later the guests had all departed or scattered. Those who
remained were playing cards and appeared settled for a good while.

"Keith, we are out of it. Let's have a game of billiards," said the
host, who had given his seat to a guest who had just come in after
saying good night on the stair to one of the ladies.

Keith followed him to the billiard-room, a big apartment finished in
oak, with several large tables in it, and he and Rhodes began to play.
The game, however, soon languished, for the two men had much to
talk about.

"Houghton, you may go," said Rhodes to the servant who attended to the
table. "I will ring for you when I want you to shut up."

"Thank you, sir"; and he was gone.

"Now tell me all about everything," said Rhodes. "I want to hear
everything that has happened since I came away--came into exile. I know
about the property and the town that has grown up just as I knew it
would. Tell me about the people--old Squire Rawson and Phrony, and
Wickersham, and Norman and his wife."

Keith told him about them. "Rhodes," he said, as he ended, "you started
it and you ought to have stayed with it. Old Rawson says you foretold
it all."

Suddenly Rhodes flung his cue down on the table and straightened up.
"Keith, this is killing me. Sometimes I think I can't stand it another
day. I've a mind to chuck up the whole business and cut for it."

Keith gazed at him in amazement. The clouded brow, the burning eyes, the
drawn mouth, all told how real that explosion was and from what depths
it came. Keith was quite startled.

"It all seems to me so empty, so unreal, so puerile. I am bored to death
with it. Do you think this is real?" He waved his arms impatiently about
him. "It is all a sham and a fraud. I am nothing--nobody. I am a puppet
on a hired stage, playing to amuse--not myself!--the Lord knows I am
bored enough by it!--but a lot of people who don't care any more about
me than I do about them. I can't stand this. D----n it! I don't want to
make love to any other man's wife any more than I will have any of them
making love to my wife. I think they are beginning to understand that. I
showed a little puppy the front door not long ago--an earl, too, or next
thing to it, an earl's eldest son--for doing what he would no more have
dared to do in an Englishman's house than he would have