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60 or two, I could manage for a bit. But I must have a river-house at Shepperton. That cat, Lulu Wallace, has one, and an electric launch and all. What about your German friend — the M.P.? He's got tons of stuff. Touch him for a bit more."

"Had a letter from him this afternoon," said Llwellyn, "with a demand for about fourteen thousand that I owe him now. Threatens to sell me up. But there was something which looked brighter at the end of the letter, though I couldn't quite make out what he was driving at."

"What was that?"

"The tone of the letter changed; it had been nasty before. He said that I could do him a service for which he would not only wipe out the old debt, but for which I could get a lot more money."

"You'll go to him at once, Bob, won't you?"

"I suppose I must. There's no way out of it. I can't think, though, how I can do him any service. He's a dabbler, an amateur in my own work, but he's not going to pay a good many thousands for any help in that."

"Let it alone till you find out," she said, with the instinctive dislike of her class to the prolonged discussion of anything unpleasant. She got up and rang the bell for her maid and supper.

For some reason Llwellyn could eat nothing. A weight oppressed him — a presage of danger and disaster. The unspeakable mental torments that the vicious man who is highly educated undergoes — torments which assail him in the very act and article of his pleasures — have never been adequately described. "What a frail structure his honours and positions were," he thought as the woman chatted of the coulisses and the blackguard news of the demi-monde. His indulgent life had acted