lence from the depths of a capacious easy-chair: "I understood from
Mrs. Westmore that she wished to see me this evening."

It was the wrong note, and he knew it; but he had been unable to conceal
his sense of the vague current of opposition in the air.

"Quite so: I believe she asked you to come," Mr. Tredegar assented,
laying his hands together vertically, and surveying Amherst above the
acute angle formed by his parched finger-tips. As he leaned back,
small, dry, dictatorial, in the careless finish of his evening dress
and pearl-studded shirt-front, his appearance put the finishing touch to
Amherst's irritation. He felt the incongruousness of his rough clothes
in this atmosphere of after-dinner ease, the mud on his walking-boots,
the clinging cotton-dust which seemed to have entered into the very
pores of the skin; and again his annoyance escaped in his voice.

"Perhaps I have come too early--" he began; but Mr. Tredegar interposed
with glacial amenity: "No, I believe you are exactly on time; but Mrs.
Westmore is unexpectedly detained. The fact is, Mr. and Mrs. Halford
Gaines are dining with her, and she has delegated to me the duty of
hearing what you have to say."

Amherst hesitated. His impulse was to exclaim: "There is no duty about
it!" but a moment's thought showed the folly of thus throwing up the
game. With the prospect of Truscomb's being about again in a day or two,
it might well be that this was his last chance of reaching Mrs.
Westmore's ear; and he was bound to put his case while he could,
irrespective of personal feeling. But his disappointment was too keen to
be denied, and after a pause he said: "Could I not speak with Mrs.
Westmore later?"

Mr. Tredegar's cool survey deepened to a frown. The young man's
importunity was really out of proportion to what he signified. "Mrs.
Westmore has asked me to replace her," he said, putting his previous
statement more concisely.

"Then I am not to see her at all?" Amherst exclaimed; and the lawyer
replied indifferently: "I am afraid not, as she leaves tomorrow."

Mr. Tredegar was in his element when refusing a favour. Not that he was
by nature unkind; he was, indeed, capable of a cold beneficence; but to
deny what it was in his power to accord was the readiest way of
proclaiming his authority, that power of loosing and binding which made
him regard himself as almost consecrated to his office.

Having sacrificed to this principle, he felt free to add as a gr