dy deliberation. "If you're so hard up though," he continued,
coldly, "I don't mind doing this much for you. I'll exchange the
thousand vendor's shares you already hold the ones I gave you to qualify
you at the beginning--for ordinary shares. You can sell those for
fifteen thousand pounds cash. In fact, I'll buy them of you now. I'll
give you a cheque for the amount. Do you want it?"

Lord Plowden, red-faced and frowning, hesitated for a fraction of time.
Then in constrained silence he nodded, and Thorpe, leaning ponderously
over the desk, wrote out the cheque. His Lordship took it, folded it up,
and put it in his pocket without immediate comment.

"Then this is the end of things, is it?" he asked, after an awkward
silence, in a voice he strove in vain to keep from shaking.

"What things?" said the other.

Plowden shrugged his shoulders, framed his lips to utter something which
he decided not to say, and at last turned on his heel. "Good day," he
called out over his shoulder, and left the room with a flagrant air of
hostility.

Thorpe, wandering about the apartment, stopped after a time at the
cabinet, and helped himself to a drink. The thing most apparent to him
was that of set purpose he had converted a friend into an enemy. Why had
he done this? He asked himself the question in varying forms, over his
brandy and soda, but no convincing answer came. He had done it because
he had felt like doing it. It was impossible to trace motives further
than that.

CHAPTER XVIII

"EDITH will be down in a very few moments," Miss Madden assured Thorpe
that evening, when he entered the drawing-room of the house she had
taken in Grafton Street.

He looked into her eyes and smiled, as he bowed over the hand she
extended to him. His glance expressed with forceful directness his
thought: "Ah, then she has told you!"

The complacent consciousness of producing a fine effect in
evening-clothes had given to Mr. Stormont Thorpe habitually now a
mildness of manner, after the dressing hour, which was lacking to his
deportment in the day-time. The conventional attire of ceremony, juggled
in the hands of an inspired tailor, had been brought to lend to his
ponderous figure a dignity, and even something of a grace, which the
man within assimilated and made his own. It was an equable and rather
amiable Thorpe whom people encountered after nightfall--a gentleman who
looked impressive enough to have powerful performances believed of