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184 "We shall see. I think you will have to admit later that I am a man of determination."

"Miss Valliant, I have been looking for you everywhere. This is our dance."

The speaker was Lord Waveryng. Elsie got up and took his arm, and they went into the ball-room.

they went in from the dim garden and through the verandah, which was like a conservatory, with its decorations of palms, Elsie's dazzled eyes seemed to see in the glare of the ball-room beyond, only one face and form, and those belonged to Blake.

He was standing close to the doorway. Elsie wondered whether he would move away when he saw her, but he turned straight to them. But Elsie noticed that he kept his eyes on Lord Waveryng, and she noticed, too, an odd watchful expression in the eyes that she had never seen there before. Lord Waveryng spoke a word to him. He, too, kept his eyes with a hard puzzled stare on Blake. He said "You see we weren't so long behind you in getting here after all. But old Stukeley is hard to move, when it's a case of Mouton Rothschild '68—capital wine that—not damaged in the least by the voyage."

"Not damaged at all," replied Blake in a mechanical tone.

"I say," said Lord Waveryng, abruptly, "do you happen to remember what Lafitte Coola used to give us at the Castle on high days?"

Blake returned the look which Lord Waveryng gave him quite unflinchingly.

"No, I don't remember," he said, and turned to Elsie. "Miss Valliant, I am afraid I am rather late in my