Among the men whom I saw occasionally at the little club in Mortimer
Street,--and nowhere else,--was one who drew my attention before I had
learnt his name or knew anything about him. Of middle age, in the fullness
of health and vigour, but slenderly built; his face rather shrewd than
intellectual, interesting rather than pleasing; always dressed as the
season's mode dictated, but without dandyism; assuredly he belonged to the
money-spending, and probably to the money-getting, world. At first sight of
him I remember resenting his cap-à-pie perfection; it struck me as bad
form--here in Mortimer Street, among fellows of the pen and the palette.

'Oh,' said Harvey Munden, 'he's afraid of being taken for one of us. He
buys pictures. Not a bad sort, I believe, if it weren't for his
snobbishness.'

'His name?'

'Ireton. Has a house in Fitzjohn Avenue, and a high-trotting wife.'

Six months later I recalled this description of Mrs. Ireton. She was the
talk of the town, the heroine of the newest divorce case. By that time I
had got to know her husband; perhaps once a fortnight we chatted at the
club, and I found him an agreeable acquaintance. Before the Divorce Court
flashed a light of scandal upon his home, I felt that there was more in him
than could be discovered in casual gossip; I wished to know him better.
Something of shyness marked his manner, and like all shy men he sometimes
appeared arrogant. He had a habit of twisting his moustache nervously and
of throwing quick glances in every direction as he talked; if he found some
one's eye upon him, he pulled himself together and sat for a moment as if
before a photographer. One easily perceived that he was not a man of