But the position, especially for a man who believed himself to attach no value whatever to it, had been somewhat dearly bought. Falconer, as he walked the London streets on that May afternoon, was trying to realise himself as at home in them, settled among them, perhaps, for an indefinite period; and the effort brought an added shade of gravity to his face. The terrible physical strain of the last six months; a strain the severity of which he had hardly realised at the time, as he endured from day to day with the simple, unimaginative perseverance of a man for whom nerves have no existence; had told even upon his iron constitution; and a couple of great London doctors had condemned him to a year’s inactivity at least, under penalties too grave to be provoked. He turned down Sloane Street, and another quarter of an hour brought him to number twenty-two, Queen Anne Street. He rang, was admitted, and ushered upstairs into the drawing-room. The room was empty, and Falconer walked across it, glancing about him with those keen, habitually observant eyes of his, and on his face there was something of the stiffness and reserve which had characterised his voice a minute earlier as he asked for Mrs. Romayne. Until the night, now nearly a fortnight ago, when they had met in Lady Bracondale’s drawing-room, Dennis Falconer had seen Mrs. Romayne only once since their journey from Nice had ended in old Mr. Falconer’s house. That one occasion had been his visit to his uncle--so called--in his Swiss home in the second year of Mrs. Romayne’s widowhood. He had been in Europe several times since then and had always made a point of visiting old Mr. Falconer, but on every subsequent occasion it had happened--rather strangely, as he had thought to himself once or twice--that Mrs. Romayne was away from home. After old Mr. Falconer’s death communication between them occurred only at the rarest intervals. Dennis Falconer was Mrs. Romayne’s only remaining relation, and in this capacity had been left by her uncle one of her trustees; but any necessary business was transacted by his fellow trustee--old Mr. Falconer’s lawyer. But the clan instinct was very strong in Falconer; it brought in its wake a whole set of duties and obligations which for most men are non-existent; and the sense of duty which had been characteristic of him in early manhood had only been more deeply--and narrowly--engraved by every succeeding year.