to keep it as a little surprise--for my mother and sister,
you know."

Some two hours later, Thorpe found the leisure and the
restored equanimity needful for a dispassionate survey
of his surroundings. He had become temporarily detached
from the group over by the fireplace in the big drawing-room
and was for the first time that evening very much at
his ease. It was all much simpler, upon experiment,
than he had feared. He stood now in a corner of the
ornate apartment, whither he had wandered in examining
the pictures on the walls, and contemplated with serenity
the five people whom he had left behind him. He was
conscious of the conviction that when he rejoined them,
it would be on a new footing of assured equality.
He knew now the exact measure of everything.

The Hon. Balder Plowden--a tall, heavily-built youth,
with enormous shoulders and thick, hard hands, and pale
straw-coloured hair and brows and eyelashes--had amiably
sauntered beside him, and was elucidating for his benefit now,
in slow, halting undertones, some unfathomable mystery
connected with the varying attitude of two distinct breeds
of terriers toward rats. Across the room, just within
reach of the flickering ruddy firelight from the hearth,
the American guest, Miss Madden, was seated at the piano,
playing some low and rather doleful music. Thorpe bent
his head, and assumed an air of attention, but in truth he
listened to neither the Honourable Balder nor the piano.
His thoughts were concentrated jealously upon his own