dence.

"There was a case of it today," he said, and then paused.

"Precisely," put in Miss Madden. "The fact that some Frenchwoman, of
whom you had never heard before, was going to lose her marriage portion
caught your attention, and on the instant you presented her with
$10,000, an exercise of power which happens to be on the generous
side--but still entirely unreasoning, and not deserving of any
intellectual respect. And here's the point: if it had happened that
somebody else chanced to produce an opposite impression upon you, you
would have been capable of taking $50,000 away from him with just as
light a heart."

Thorpe's face beamed with repressed amusement. "As a matter of fact it
was that kind of case I was going to mention. I wasn't referring to the
girl and her marriage portion. A young man came to me today--came into
my room all cock-a-whoop, smiling to himself with the notion that he had
only to name what he wanted, and I would give it to him--and----"

He stopped abruptly, with a confused little laugh. He had been upon the
brink of telling about Lord Plowden's discomfiture, and even now the
story itched upon his tongue. It cost him an effort to put the narrative
aside, the while he pondered the arguments which had suddenly reared
themselves against publicity. When at last he spoke, it was with a
glance of conscious magnanimity toward the lady who had consented to be
his wife.

"Never mind," he said, lightly. "There wasn't much to it. The man
annoyed me, somehow--and he didn't get what he came for--that's all."

"But he was entitled to get it?" asked Celia Madden. Thorpe's lips
pouted over a reply. "Well--no," he said, with a kind of reluctance.
"He got strictly what he was entitled to--precisely what I had promised
him--and he wrung up his nose at that--and then I actually gave him
15,000 pounds he wasn't entitled to at all."

"I hardly see what it proves, then," Edith Cressage remarked, and the
subject was dropped.

Some two hours later, Thorpe took his departure. It was not until he
was getting into the hansom which had been summoned, that it all at
once occurred to him that he had not for a moment been alone with his
betrothed. Upon reflection, as the cab sped smoothly forward, this
seemed odd to him. He decided finally that there was probably some
social rule about such things which he didn't understand.

*****

In the drawing-room of the house in Grafton Street which he had quitted,
the tw