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the Carlton when he first came to England, but after a time he resented the other people in the hotel. The eating and drinking, the dresses of the women, the inane expression of the men- this was in his second London season-irritated him. He used to see them when he returned from a lonely stroll over Putney Bridge, or to Richmond, where the windings of the Thames, glimmering through the darkness, had an unceasing fascination for him. Later, for a little space, it occurred to him to investigate the Embankment after a theatre or some function that had bored him, and the sight of the poverty stricken waifs and poverty-stricken strays haunted him; and then, more than ever, he shrank from the Carlton. He resented especially the gobblers and guzzlers in the softly shaded restaurant, clattering their knives and forks and clinking their glasses, when they would have been better off in their beds with the windows open and the breath of heaven coming in to purify their fatuous souls and suggest some meaning to life.

Some meaning to life? Unconsciously he was looking for it, and felt it near him, yet hidden by an undergrowth and overgrowth. "Money has a great deal to answer for," he said to himself one day, half cynically; and gradually this idea took hold of him. But it was the manner in which other people used it that surprised him; with his own he - dealt as a thing of no par

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gave easily, and without much consideration, and worried himself not at all. It never occurred to him to measure the result, till a long interview with his bankers took him by surprise and left him puzzled but not anxious-on the contrary, rather amused.

It was Lant who found the house in Princes Gate - the day before he sailed for Australia. Wendern refused to consider it; he was tired of London, and wanted to go to a desert.

"But the offices are in Great St Helen's, not in a desert, and you are the Managing Director," Lant responded blandly. "In a year or two, when

many fortunes have been made, you can go where you please. Meanwhile, I'm afraid you must occasionally be on the spot."

"I hate the accursed rows of houses in London," Wendern answered. "I hanker for a tent in the middle of a green space."

"My dear chap, I know what you mean, and the house that I have seen is exactly what you want. You will look on the Park from the front windows; at the back there is a large and enclosed garden reserved for the benefit of the tenants. The people in the other houses are usually occupied in ministering or preparing to minister to their vanities, so you will have the green space you long for to yourself. The house is admirably furnished: the amiable couple who did it have

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just been divorced, and you his character. can buy the whole thing speculators, did you ever notice that the big birdsvultures, let us call them,— and the big fishes sharks, let us say, make it their business to stay at one of five hotels in London? When they are there, you may conclude that they deal in millions; if you nibble at the bait, you know that the stakes are worth considering. This is why, next time I come, I shall avoid those luxurious haunts. If I stay at any hotel it will be one of the quieter places the haunt of the county magnates, the well - dowered spinsters, and dowagers whose husbands knew that generosity is a supreme virtue in the eyes of women.'

cheaply. The servants you can take on. The stabling is excellent, a garage has been added-in fact, everything is there; London is at your feet; take my advice, don't kick it away even with the softest slipper. You can entertain or not, as you please, at Princes Gate, and the address will sound admirable to the Bangor Estates Syndicate; it will prove that you are a resident and not a bird of passage. I'm not sure that it's well to stay too long at hotels especially at hotels of a particular sort. Next time I come to London I shall take a house for the season. I am always afraid of being called a speculator."

"But you are one," Wendern said absently.

"Oh no, dear chappie, that's unfair. I am a benefactor discovering the unknown portions of the earth and insisting that they shall yield their produce, or develop their possibilities, for the benefit of men. It sounds almost scriptural, doesn't it? I frequently read the Scriptures-a fine work, full of picturesque passages: some of them would look so well on a prospectus."

"You are a humorous blasphemer."

"Not at all, sonnie, not at all." Lant's tone was almost affectionate; for no matter what his faults might be, he had a liking for Wendern, and he knew, and had even a respect for, the qualities that went to the making of

"Now and then it has crossed my mind that you are a scoundrel, Lant." Wendern's voice prevented his words from being offensive.

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"So unkind of you.' The tone was still soft and pleasant. "By the way, is it true that there is to be a lawsuit about the Derryford Docks?” "I heard something about it."

"It will interest you to the extent of a good many thousands-if you allow it to come to one?"

"Yes; and I shall, if it is necessary. They have behaved scandalously."

"Still, I hope it won't. In a lawsuit both sides usually get the worst of it; it would be a pity if the thousands fell into the gap between." Lant had a righteous horror of all legal proceedings: he thought

they proved that one of the parties concerned had shown a lamentable lack of the art of propitiation, and the other of an equable temper.

"It wouldn't matter," Wendern said with a shrug. "There are things one has to do; the cost is counted later."

CHAPTER III.

For nearly two years Wendern lived at Princes Gate quietly and apparently content. He saw few and fewer people; he appeared to be thinking out some problem that gradually presented itself out of the mists and silences that gathered gathered round him. Beyond them a Beyond them a sense of developments sometimes dreamily haunted him, but he was neither curious nor impatient; they would come as surely as the soft-footed days of the years he had to live, and he was content to wait.

too, of an unpleasant sort seemed to be in the air.

The developments began when he least suspected it, and in more than one direction. Lord Derbyshire, a fairhaired young man, a bit of a fool, but harmless, whom Lant had used freely for Syndicate purposes, dropped in one morning.

"I say,

I want you to come and dine at Claridge's tomorrow,' morrow," he said. "I have persuaded my uncle, old Lord Kenton, you know, to let me give a party there-awful lark; he'll pay the bill and all that. He is getting old and afraid of mortifying before his son gets married-son doesn't want to marry. He's the only son, and uncle Kentie thinks he ought. Told him I'd invite that American girl, Katherine Fiffer,-ever hear of her?"

Wendern shook his head.

The Bangor Estates Syndicate provided him with a certain amount of excitement. The statutory meeting at the end of the first year being highly satisfactory, and the accounts from Lant extravagantly good, the shareholders were reckless and exhilarated. Then there had been a somewhat sudden drop, a gradual "Awfully nice girl, carries reaction, a sense of things not her head as if she thought a going so well, which annoyed lot of it; she and her mother him; but he shook off his are staying at the Ritz, they vexation-all things had their talk of settling in London; got ebb and flow, he thought; it money to spend, cartloads of was the inevitable law. The it. Uncle Kentie thinks it ebb seemed to prolong itself, ought to be kept in the there was no violent slump, country, some one ought to but a gradual slackening; and marry her; he's too old for the time came when uneasi- her himself, and Malcolm— ness rather than annoyance son, you know-doesn't like oppressed him. Threatenings, women, prefers motors, lives

in a garage. Rather think he wants me to take her on, but I don't expect she'd rise to that." "Probably there won't be much difficulty in finding some one else."

"Loads of cash, you know." "I'm beginning to see," Wendern said slowly, "that there's just one great power left in England, and every one is trying to grab it."

"What is it? Might give me the tip."

"Money."

"Awful bore not having it." "It has never troubled me much."

"Wait till it's gone, then it will. Seems to make itself into a sort of ghost you can't lay hold of, comes and worries you last thing at night and in the small hours of the morning; tells you you've been an ass, and has a nasty nagging way. You see, it isn't any good unless you spend it, and when you do, you haven't got it any longer." The fatuous face looked anxious.

The poor chap couldn't help being an idiot, Wendern thought. "I didn't know you were worried about this sort of thing," he said; "the right use of money will be the world's next problem."

"Daresay; but problems are an awful nuisance. One sort worries you when you're at school, another sort puts you in the divorce court- think it's best to keep clear of them myself. Wonder what you'll say to Miss Fiffer?"

"Are you in love with her?" "No. She's a fine girl, of course, but I like 'em more

lively-the sort you see on the stage; there's an awfully fetching one at the Prince's; I happen to know her a little." "Does that mean a good deal?"

"It would if I could raise some cash-if that Syndicate of Lant's would bob up now. It doesn't matter what else you've got, if you haven't ready money it's the deuce. I wish you would put me in the way of a thousand or two."

Wendern shook his head. "Not to go that journey. Look here, you're a big landowner: I have been thinking that there must be work cut out for all of us

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"Oh, I say, if you're going to think again, I'm off-thinking is just about the worst thing you can do if you want to enjoy yourself, assure you it is, and if you don't enjoy yourself, what's the good of anything? Besides, my lotthe land I mean-is pretty rotten. Everything on it nearly lying full length because it can't stand up any longer, and not another mortgagee will even look round it."

At ten minutes past eight the next evening Wendern saw Katherine Fiffer at Claridge's. He stood in a group that had gathered for the dinner-party. He turned his head towards the door just as she entered. She was slim and tall, brownhaired and gray-eyed, proud and dreamy-looking; her mouth was grave and sweet, yet almost roguish when she smiled, and she carried herself like a

or

princess in a fairy tale. He seldom noticed women, rather he always noticed them, and forgot them an hour after they had vanished; but her face haunted him from the first moment; she drew him to her, held him and filled his life, not insistently so much as unceasingly, standing out in his thoughts as the one woman in the world. He bent a little forward as if he had been waiting when she passed him after shaking hands with her host, then drew back, remembering they were strangers; but he felt as if a curtain had been drawn aside, a misty veil lifted and dropped again, whole distances seemed to spread out behind and before him, a hundred different thoughts chased themselves vaguely through his brain; but the sum of it all was that he had seen the woman he would love, who Iwould be his life.

"I think she's just about the most rippin' girl I ever metI mean, for a girl who isn't lively," Derbyshire said to him later.

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will carry youth about with them as long as they live."

"Awfully lucky for them, you, know; wonder what the dodge is?"

"It's doing or thinking that turns mere consciousness into living and the years into milestones you touch on your journey. I've been learning that lesson during the last year."

Derbyshire was puzzled again. "Well, if you mean that worrying about things uses you up, I'd rather leave them alone, worst of it is, they come hurrying after you sometimes," he said. "I never know whether you are talking rot or awfully good stuff," he added.

"Neither do I," there was a smile in Wendern's eye. "I just say what I feel, and let the rest settle itself."

He sat next to Mrs Fiffer at dinner. A somewhat sharpeyed woman with a thin face, a kindly smile, quick and eager, who looked as if she remembered many vicissitudes in life and had fought them bravely. As a matter of fact, she was a little uneasy with her wealth and not altogether at home in her finery; but she went on, interested and determined to grapple with the new difficulties just as she had done with the old, bringing the same qualities to bear upon them. She told Wendern that she was a widow, with only Katherine, and no relations to look after them. They meant to settle down in England, for a few months anyway, perhaps alto

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