ason of that year was over Conroy
had disappeared from London. His name still appeared occasionally
in the columns which the newspapers devote to fashionable intelligence.
But the house in Park Lane--the scene of many magnificent
entertainments--was sold. The dinner parties, balls and card parties
ceased; and Conroy entered upon what must have been the most exciting
period of his life.

Bob Power--no one ever called him Robert--belonged to an old and
respected Irish family, being a younger son of General Power of
Kilfenora. He was educated at Harrow and afterwards at Trinity
College. He was called to the Irish bar and might have achieved in
time the comfortable mediocrity of a County Court judgeship if he had
not become Conroy's private secretary. The post was secured for him by
an uncle who had known Conroy in New York in the days before he became
a millionaire, while it was still possible for an ordinary man to do
him a favour. Bob accepted the post because everybody said he would be
a fool to refuse it. He did not much like writing letters. The making
out of schemes for the arrangements of Conroy's guests at the more
formal dinner parties worried him. The general supervision of the
upper servants was no delight to him. But he did all these things
fairly well, and his unfailing good spirits carried him safely through
periods of very tiresome duty. He became, in spite of the twenty-five
years' difference of age between him and his patron, the intimate
friend of Joseph Peterson Conroy.

It was to Bob that Conroy confided the fact that he was tired of the
life of a leader of English society. The two men were sitting together
in the smoking room at one o'clock in the morning after one of
Conroy's most magnificent entertainments.

"I'm damned well sick of all this," said Conroy suddenly.

"So am I," said Bob.

Bob Power was a man of adventurous disposition. He had a reputation in
Connacht as a singularly bold rider to hounds. The story of his
singlehanded cruise round Ireland in a ten tonner will be told among
yachtsmen until his son does something more extravagantly idiotic.
The London season always bored him. The atmosphere of Conroy's house
in Park Lane stifled him.

"Is there any one thing left in this rotten old world," said Conroy,
"that's worth doing?"

In Bob's opinion there were several things very well worth doing. He
suggested one of them at once.

"Let's get out the _Finola_," he said, "and go for a