-faced chap, with little dark eyes and a red moustache."

"She's still a young woman?"

"Thirty or thirty-two."

"How was it they didn't get on?"

The sound of a match being struck.

"Case of the kettle and the pot."

"It's easy to see she's fond of admiration. Love of admiration plays old
Harry with women!"

Winlow's leisurely tones again

"There was a child, I believe, and it died. And after that--I know there
was some story; you never could get to the bottom of it. Bellew chucked
his regiment in consequence. She's subject to moods, they say, when
nothing's exciting enough; must skate on thin ice, must have a man
skating after her. If the poor devil weighs more than she does, in he
goes."

"That's like her father, old Cheriton. I knew him at the club--one of
the old sort of squires; married his second wife at sixty and buried her
at eighty. Old 'Claret and Piquet,' they called him; had more children
under the rose than any man in Devonshire. I saw him playing half-crown
points the week before he died. It's in the blood. What's George's
weight?--ah, ha!"

"It's no laughing matter, Brandwhite. There's time for a hundred up
before dinner if you care for a game, Winlow?"

The sound of chairs drawn back, of footsteps, and the closing of a door.
George was alone again, a spot of red in either of his cheeks. Those
vague stirrings of chivalry and aspiration were gone, and gone that
sense of well-earned ease. He got up, came out of his corner, and walked
to and fro on the tiger-skin before the fire. He lit a cigarette, threw
it away, and lit another.

Skating on thin ice! That would not stop him! Their gossip would not
stop him, nor their sneers; they would but send him on the faster!

He threw away the second cigarette. It was strange for him to go to the
drawing-room at this hour of the day, but he went.

Opening the door quietly, he saw the long, pleasant room lighted with
tall oil-lamps, and Mrs. Bellew seated at the piano, singing. The
tea-things were still on a table at one end, but every one had finished.
As far away as might be, in the embrasure of the bay-window, General
Pendyce and Bee were playing chess. Grouped in the centre of the room,
by one of the lamps, Lady Maiden, Mrs. Winlow, and Mrs. Brandwhite had
turned their faces towards the piano, and a sort of slight unwillingness
or surprise showed on those faces, a sort of "We were having a
most interesting talk; I don't think we ought to have bee