grounds. The fog and mist combined to run the many lights of the
Thursdale windows into a single smear of colour a few shades brighter
than the darkness from which it protruded. Dauntless's heart was
inside that vague, impressionistic circle of colour, but his brain was
very much in evidence on the distant outside. What were the workings
of that eager brain will soon be revealed--to the reader, at least, if
not to the occupants of the rain-bound clubhouse.

A word concerning Dauntless. He was the good-looking son of old banker
Dauntless, who died immediately after his cashier brought ruin to the
concern of which he was president. This blow fell when his son was in
his senior year at Harvard. He took his degree, and then, instead of
the promised trip around the world, he came home and went to work in
the offices of a big brokerage firm. Everybody knew and liked him. He
was a steady, earnest worker, and likewise a sportsman of the right
temperament. Big, fashionable Faraway looked upon him as its most
gallant member; no one cared to remember that he might have been very
rich; every one loved him because he had been rich and was worthy in
spite of that. It was common knowledge that he was desperately in love
with pretty Eleanor Thursdale, daughter of the eminently fashionable
and snobbishly aristocratic widow Thursdale, mistress of many millions
and leader of select hundreds. Moreover, it was now pretty well known
that Mrs. Thursdale had utterly lost sight of Dauntless in surveying
the field of desirable husbands for Eleanor. She could see nothing but
Englishmen, behind whom lurked the historic London drawing-rooms and
British estates. That is how and why young Windomshire, a most
delightful Londoner, with prospects and a peerage behind him, came to
be a guest in her city house, following close upon a long sojourn in
the Bermudas. HE had been chosen; the battle was over, so far as
Eleanor's hand was concerned. What matter if Dauntless had her heart?