. "Ah! yes--the heart. You, my dear boy,
are a man of the world. You understand life. You are never
narrow-minded--eh?" he asked, advancing a step nearer to me.

"I hope not," I said. "At any rate, I've always been your friend, ever
since our first meeting on the steamer on the Lake of Garda, last
February."

The eminent engineer rolled his cigar between his fingers, and calmly
contemplated it in silence.

Then, quite abruptly, he exclaimed:

"Royle, my present misfortune is due to a woman."

"Ah!" I sighed. "A woman! Always a woman in such cases! Well?"

"Mind you, I don't blame her in the least," he went on quickly, "I--I was
hot-tempered, and I miscalculated her power. We quarrelled, and--and she,
though so young, refined and pretty, has arisen to crush me."

"Anyone I know?"

"No. I think not," was his slow reply, his dark eyes gazing full into
mine as he still stood astride upon the hearthrug.

Then he fidgeted uneasily, stroked his well-clipped grey beard with his
strong, bronzed hand, and strode across the room and back again.

"Look here, Royle," he exclaimed at last. "You're my friend, so I may as
well speak straight out. Will you help me?"

"Certainly--if I can."

"I'm in a hole--a confounded hole. I've been worried ever since I got
back from Egypt just before Christmas. Only you can save me."

"Me! Why?"

"I want you to remain my friend; to still believe in me, when--well--when
I've gone under," he answered brokenly, his brows contracting as he
spoke.

"I don't understand you."

"Then I'll speak more plainly. To-night is the last time we shall meet.
I've played the game, I tell you--and I've lost!"

"You seem horribly hipped about something to-night, my dear fellow!" I
exclaimed in wonder at his strange words. In all my circle of friends no
man was more level-headed than Sir Digby Kemsley.

"Yes, I'm not quite myself. Perhaps you wouldn't be, Royle, in the same
circumstances." Halting, he stood erect with his hands clasped behind his
back. Even then, at that moment of despair, he presented the fine figure
of a man in his well-cut dinner clothes and the single ruby in his pique
shirt-front. "I want to entrust a secret to you--a great secret," he went
on a few seconds later. "I tell you that to-night is the last occasion
we shall ever meet, but I beg--may I implore you to judge me with
leniency, to form no unjust conclusions, and when you remember me to
regard my memory as that of a man w