She nodded. "Moropulos isn't anything to boast about. Steppe likes him, though." Apparently the cachet of Mr. Steppe satisfied Ronnie in all things. "He's a Greek--you've met him? A sleek devil. They say that he's afraid except when he is drunk." "Ronnie!" "A fact. Moropulos drinks like a fish. Absinthe and all sorts of stuff. Steppe told me. That is why this nigger fellow Sault is useful. Sault is the only man who can handle him. He's as strong as an ox. There isn't a smarter devil than Moropulos. He has the brain of a cabinet minister, and is as close as an oyster. But when the fit is on him he'd stand up in the street and talk himself into gaol. And others--not Steppe, of course," he added hastily, "Steppe has nothing to be afraid of, only--well, Moropulos might say things that would look bad." "And is that all?" she asked with an odd sense of disappointment. "Doesn't Mr. Sault do anything else but act as a sort of keeper?" Ronnie, already weary of the subject, yawned behind his hand. "Awfully sorry, but I was up late last night. Sault? Oh, yes, I believe he does odd jobs. He is rather an ugly brute, isn't he?" She did not answer this. Her interest in the man puzzled her. He appealed in a strange fashion to something within her that was very wholesome. She was glad, very glad, about his war decorations. That he should have done fine things--she liked to forget Ronnie's war services. "I wish I had decided to ride this morning," complained Ronnie. "I never dreamed you would be out on a day like this. Why I came into the park at all I really do not know. I didn't realize it was a bank holiday and that all these dreadful people would be unchained for the day. How is the doctor--well?" She nodded. "He looked a little peaked when I saw him last. Look, Beryl--Steppe!" A car, headed for Marble Arch, had swerved across the road in response to the signal of its occupant. It pulled up behind Ronald's machine and Mr. Steppe, with his queer sideways smile, alighted, waving a white-gloved hand. "Oh, dear," said Beryl plaintively, "why did I get off that horse? I could have pretended that I had not recognized him." "My dear girl!" Ronald was genuinely distressed and it came to Beryl in the nature of an unpleasant discovery that he was so completely in awe of the financier, that his manner, his attitude, the very tone of his voice, changed at the sight of him. And Steppe seemed to expect this homage, took it as his right, dismissed and obliterated Ronnie from participation with a jerk of his head intended as an acknowledgment of his greeting and as an excusal of his presence. Beryl could not help realizing his unimportance in the millionaire's scheme of life.