ving them in his hands. Voila! He wishes now to put a bullet
through his brain. He proposes that as the fitting end of Fromentin
Freres."

Thorpe, his chin on his breast, continued to regard the melancholy
figure opposite with a moody eye. It seemed a long minute before he
broke the tense silence by a sigh of discomfort. "I do not discuss these
things with anybody," he said then, coldly. "If I had known who you
were, I don't think you'd have got in."

The Marquis of Chaldon intuitively straightened himself in his chair,
and turned toward the speaker a glance of distressed surprise.

"Or no--I beg your pardon," Thorpe hastened to add, upon the instant
hint of this look--"that doesn't convey my meaning. Of course, our
Chairman brings whom he pleases. His friends--as a matter of course--are
our friends. What I should have said was that if this had been mentioned
beforehand to me, I should have explained that it wasn't possible to
discuss that particular business."

"But--pardon me"--said Lord Chaldon, in a quiet, very gentle, yet
insistent voice, which seemed now to recall to its listeners the fact
that sovereigns and chancellors had in their day had attentive ears for
its tones--"pardon me, but why should it not be possible?"

Thorpe frowned doubtfully, and shifted his position in his chair. "What
could I say, if it were discussed?" he made vague retort. "I'm merely
one of the Directors. You are our Chairman, but you see he hasn't found
it of any use to discuss it with you. There are hard and fast rules
about these things. They run their natural course. You are not a
business man, my Lord----"

"Oh, I think I may be called a 'business man,'" interposed the nobleman,
suavely. "They would tell you so in Calcutta, I think, and in Cairo too.
When one considers it, I have transacted a great deal of business--on
the behalf of other people. And if you will permit me--I do not impute
indirection, of course--but your remark seems to require a footnote. It
is true that I am Chairman of the Board on which you are a Director--but
it is not quite the whole truth. I as Chairman know absolutely nothing
about this matter. As I understand the situation, it is not in your
capacity as a Director that you know anything about it either. Yet----"

He paused, as if suddenly conscious of some impropriety in this
domestic frankness before a third party, and Thorpe pounced through his
well-mannered hesitation with the swiftness of a bird of