tting up" Daventry to every move
in the great game which was soon to be played out, a game in which a
woman's honor and future were at stake. The custody of a much-loved
child might also come into question.

"Suppose Addington is suddenly stricken with paralysis in the middle of
the case, you must be ready to carry it through triumphantly alone," he
observed, with quietly twinkling eyes, to Daventry.

"May I have a glass of your oldest brandy, sir?" returned Daventry,
holding on to the dinner-table with both hands.

The brandy was given to him and the discussion of the case continued. By
degrees Dion found himself becoming strongly interested in Mrs. Clarke,
whose name came up constantly. She was evidently a talented and a very
unusual woman. Perhaps the latter fact partially accounted for the
unusual difficulties in which she was now involved. Her husband,
Councilor to the British Embassy at Constantinople, charged her with
misconduct, and had cited two co-respondents,--Hadi Bey, a Turkish
officer, and Aristide Dumeny, a French diplomat,--both apparently men
of intellect and of highly cultivated tastes, and both slightly younger
than Mrs. Clarke. A curious fact in the case was that Beadon Clarke was
deeply in love with his wife, and had--so Dion gathered from a remark of
Bruce Evelin's--probably been induced to take action against her by
his mother, Lady Ermyntrude Clarke, who evidently disliked, and perhaps
honestly disbelieved in, her daughter-in-law. There was one child of
the marriage, a boy, to whom both the parents were deeply attached. The
elements of tragedy in the drama were accentuated by the power to love
possessed by accuser and accused. As Dion listened to the discussion
he realized what a driving terror, what a great black figure, almost
monstrous, love can be--not only the sunshine, but the abysmal darkness
of life.

Presently, in a pause, while Daventry was considering some difficult
point, Dion remembered that Beatrice was sitting upstairs alone. Her
complete unselfishness always made him feel specially chivalrous towards
her. Now he got up.

"It's tremendously interesting, but I'm going upstairs to Beattie," he
said.

"Ah, how subtle of you, my boy!" said Bruce Evelin.

"Subtle! Why?"

"I was just coming to the professional secrets."

Dion smiled and went off to Beattie. He found her working quietly,
almost dreamily, on one of those fairy garments such as he had seen
growing towards its mi