“Good.” They rose to their feet. “See how I bank on your goodwill. If I were a man, I wouldn’t drive a girl home when she’d just told me off across my own table.” “I think you would,” said Dick. John Richard Shere, Viscount Pembury, was thirty-two. He had looked thirty-two for years and was likely to look thirty-two when he was forty. And there you have the man—steady, conservative, faithful. With it all, he was never dull. He was gay, eager, brilliant—could have taken his place anywhere: and his place was high. The tragedy of it was that access to his place was denied him. If his ways were charming, his means were unhappily of no account. What was worse, they would never be anything else. The collapse of Russia had finished the House of Shere. His father had sunk to an annuity and dwelled at a Club. His mother was dead—mercifully. He had sought employment, of course, but his style was against him. Besides, he had been bred to be an earl. He was certainly offered six hundred a year to show motor-cars, but had declined the honour. He was ready to sell his labour, but not his name. His greatest regret was that he would never hunt hounds. Tall, slight, dark, gentle-eyed, he was a man to look twice at. If you did so, you saw the strength of his pleasant mouth and the firm set of his chin. At Oxford, where he had been President of Vincent’s, he was known as ‘The Velvet Glove.’ Lady Elizabeth Crecy was twenty-nine, dark and grey-eyed. She could, I suppose, have married anyone. Her beauty, her wisdom, her excellence in all she did made three distinct, forcible appeals. I do not think the man lives who, had she pleased, could have resisted successfully so dazzling a combination. That she did not please made little enough difference. The result was the same. Men fell in love at first sight—and Sir Hilton Shutter among them. People said he had proposed six times. Shutter believed in living and indulged his belief. He did himself very well—on thirty-five thousand a year. His ocean-going yacht was the last word. He was forty-six years old and had been handsome. He was also the second baronet and had been High Sheriff of Berkshire, in which county his name was respected almost as highly as he respected it himself. He was well known in London and believed in writing to _The Times_. A letter above his signature appeared about once a month. Lady Elizabeth Crecy had, in her own right, three hundred and fifty a year. The wind had died and a fine rain was falling when Pembury turned into King Street in quest of his car. The wet did not stop him from looking the old Rolls over to see that she had taken no hurt. Besides, he feared that rain might have forced an entrance. . . . But the coupé had been built by men who knew their business. Cushions and floor were bone dry. He started the engine and left for the Richelieu at once.