"I am going to kill myself some time to-day," said Zeal, in a voice so emotionless that Gwynne wondered idly if all his capacity for expression had gone to his eyes. "I should have done it several hours earlier, but I felt that I owed you an explanation. You can pass it on to my grandfather when the time comes." He paused a moment, and then he too seemed to brace himself. "I killed Brathland," he said. Gwynne moistened his lips. "Poor old Zeal," he muttered. "It must be a horrid sensation--" "To be a murderer? I can assure you it is." Gwynne's mind seemed to darken until only one luminous point confronted it, the visible tormented soul of his kinsman. He walked over to the table and mixed two tumblers of whiskey-and-soda, wondering why he had not thought of it before. They drank without haste, and then Gwynne took the chair opposite Zeal's. "Tell me all about it," he said. "Brathland and I had not been friends for some years. He was a bounder, and an ass in the bargain. I never, even when we were on speaking terms, made any particular effort to hide what I thought of him--it wasn't worth while. Of course, with every mother firing her girls at his head, and the flatterers and toadies from whom a prospective duke cannot escape if he would, he had an opinion of himself that would have made me the object of his particular rancor, even if I hadn't cut him out with three different women that couldn't marry either of us. When I got the verdict that I must pull up or go under, he chose that particular moment to take up with Stella Starr, the only woman I ever cared a pin for. Somehow, he got wind of my condition, and knowing that I would prefer to retire as gracefully as possible, it struck him as the refinement of vengeance to make a laughing-stock of me when I was no longer in a condition to play the game out; to advertise me as a worn-out rake for whom the world of Stella Starrs had no further use. We never spoke again until Friday night." He paused, then mixed and drank another whiskey-and-soda, lit a cigarette, and resumed. "I had objected to his being let into the mine, which Vanneck's agent and private letters had persuaded the rest of us would make our fortunes; but I was helpless, for he was not only Vanneck's cousin, but his brother is out in Africa and also interested in the mine. I therefore consented to attend the dinner at which the whole business was to be discussed, fully intending to treat him as I should any stranger to whom I had just been introduced. "At first all went well enough. We had the private dining-room and smoking-room on the second floor at the Club, the dinner was excellent, and Brathland, although nearly opposite me, behaved as decently as he always did when sober. It was champagne that let loose the bounder in him, and that was one reason I always so thoroughly despised him: the man that is not a gentleman when he is drunk has no right to be alive at all.