He had a wonderfully appointed house in Park Lane, one of those smaller
ones just at the turn out of Grosvenor Street, and there he entertained
in a reserved fashion.

It had been remarked by people who had time to think--rare cases in
these days--that he had never made a disadvantageous friend, from his
very first arrival. If he had to use undesirables for business purposes
he used them only for that, in a crisp, hard way, and never went to
their houses. Every acquaintance even was selected with care for a
definite end. One of his favorite phrases was that "it is only the fool
who coins for himself limitations."

At this time, as he sat smoking a fine cigar in his library which looked
out on the park, he was perhaps forty-six years old or thereabouts, and
but for his eyes--wise as serpents'--he might have been ten years
younger.

Opposite to him facing the light a young man lounged in a great leather
chair. The visitors in Francis Markrute's library nearly always faced
the light, while he himself had his back to it.

There was no doubt about this visitor's nation! He was flamboyantly
English. If you had wished to send a prize specimen of the race to a
World's Fair you could not have selected anything finer. He was perhaps
more Norman than Saxon, for his hair was dark though his eyes were blue,
and the marks of breeding in the creature showed as plainly as in a
Derby winner. Francis Markrute always smoked his cigars to the end, if
he were at leisure and the weed happened to be a good one, but Lord
Tancred (Tristram Lorrimer Guiscard Guiscard, 24th Baron Tancred, of
Wrayth in the County of Suffolk) flung his into the grate after a few