lar, finely-cut, impassive to hardness. When he
talked, or followed with interest the talk of others, it revealed almost
an excess of animation. Then one noted the flashing subtlety of his
glance, the swift facility of his smile and comprehending brows, and saw
that it was not the guardsman face at all. His skin was fresh-hued, and
there was a shade of warm brown in his small, well-ordered moustasche,
but his hair, wavy and worn longer than the fashion, seemed black. There
were perceptible veins of grey in it, though he had only entered his
thirty-fifth year. He was dressed habitually with the utmost possible
care.

The contrast between this personage and the older man confronting him
was abrupt. Thorpe was also tall, but of a burly and slouching figure.
His face, shrouded in a high-growing, dust-coloured beard, invited no
attention. One seemed always to have known this face--thick-featured,
immobile, undistinguished. Its accessories for the time being were even
more than ordinarily unimpressive. Both hair and beard were ragged with
neglect. His commonplace, dark clothes looked as if he had slept in
them. The hands resting on his big knees were coarse in shape, and
roughened, and ill-kept.

"I couldn't have asked anything better than your dropping in," he
repeated now, speaking with a drag, as of caution, on his words.
"Witnesses or no witnesses, I'm anxious to have you understand that I
realize what I owe to you."

"I only wish it were a great deal more than it is," replied the other,
with a frank smile.

"Oh, it'll mount up to considerable, as it stands," said Thorpe.

He could hear that there was a kind of reservation in his voice; the
suspicion that his companion detected it embarrassed him. He found
himself in the position of fencing with a man to whom all his feelings
impelled him to be perfectly open. He paused, and was awkwardly
conscious of constraint in the silence which ensued. "You are very kind
to put it in that way," said Lord Plowden, at last. He seemed also to be
finding words for his thoughts with a certain difficulty. He turned
his cigar round in his white fingers meditatively. "I gather that
your success has been complete--as complete as you yourself could have
desired. I congratulate you with all my heart."

"No--don't say my success--say our success," put in Thorpe.

"But, my dear man," the other corrected him, "my interest, compared with
yours, is hardly more than nominal. I'm a Director, o