ding to
irritation, but mentally alert to a new element of resistance which he
had not expected--a new force, palpable, unlooked for, unclassified as
yet in his schedule for his life's itinerary. That force was the
cohesive power of abstract caste in the presence of a foreign irritant
threatening its atomic disintegration. That foreign and irritating
substance was himself. But he had forgotten in his vanity that which in
his rawer shrewdness he should have remembered. Eternal vigilance was
the price; not the cancelled vouchers of the servitude of dead years and
the half-servile challenge of the strange new days when his vanity had
dared him to live.

* * * * *

Rosamund, smoothly groomed, golden-headed, and smiling, rose as Neergard
moved slowly forward to take his leave.

"So stupid of them to have overlooked you," she said; "and I should have
thought Gladys would have remembered--unless--"

His close-set eyes focussed so near her own that she stopped,
involuntarily occupied with the unusual phenomenon.

"Unless what?" he asked.

She was all laughing polished surface again. "Unless Gladys's
intellect, which has only room for one idea at a time, is already fully
occupied."

"With what?" he demanded.

"Oh, with that Gerald boy "--she shrugged indulgently--"perhaps with her
pretty American Grace and the outlook for the Insular invasion."

Neergard's apple face was dull and mottled, and on the thin bridge of
his nose the sweat glistened. He did not know what she meant; and she
knew he did not.

As he turned to go she paced him a step or two across the rose-and-gold
reception-room, hands linked behind her back, bending forward slightly
as she moved beside him.

"Gerald, poor lad, is to be disciplined," she observed. "The prettiest
of American duchesses takes her over next spring; and Heaven knows the
household cavalry needs green forage . . . Besides, even Jack Ruthven
may stand the chance they say he stands if it is true he has made up his
mind to sue for his divorce."

Neergard wheeled on her; the sweat on his nose had become a bright bead.

"Where did you hear that?" he asked.

"What? About Jack Ruthven?" Her smooth shoulders fluttered her answer.

"You mean it's talked about?" he insisted.

"In some sets," she said with an indifference which coolly excluded the
probability that he could have been in any position to hear what was
discussed in those sets.

Again he fel