Lucian produced his cheque-book and wrote out a cheque for the amount which his uncle wished to borrow. Mr. Pepperdine insisted upon drawing up a formal memorandum of its receipt, and admonished his nephew to put it carefully away with his other business papers. But Lucian never kept any business papers--his usual practice was to tear everything up that looked like a business document and throw the fragments into the waste-paper basket. He would treasure the most obscure second-hand bookseller’s catalogue as if it had been a gilt-edged security, but bills and receipts and business letters annoyed him, and Mr. Pepperdine’s carefully scrawled sheet of notepaper went into the usual receptacle as soon as its writer had left the room. And as he crumpled it up and threw it into the basket, laughing at the old-fashioned habits of his uncle, Lucian also threw off all recollection of the incident and became absorbed in his new tragedy. Coming in from the theatre that night he found a little pile of letters waiting for him on the hall table, and he took them into his study and opened them carelessly. There was a long epistle from Mrs. Berenson--he read half of it and threw that and the remaining sheets away with an exclamation of impatience. There was a note from the great actor-manager who was going to produce the new tragedy--he laid that open on his desk and put a paper-weight upon it. The rest of his letters were invitations, requests for autographs, gushing epistles from admiring readers, and so on--he soon bundled them all together and laid them aside. But there was one which he had kept to the last--a formal-looking affair with the name of his bank engraved on the flap of the envelope, and he opened it with some curiosity. The letter which it enclosed was short and formal, but when Lucian had read it he recognised in some vague and not very definite fashion that it constituted an epoch. He read it again and yet again, with knitted brows and puzzled eyes, and then he put it on his desk and sat staring at it as if he did not understand the news which it was meant to convey to him. It was a very commonplace communication this, but Lucian had never seen anything of its sort before. It was just a brief, politely worded note from his bankers, informing him that they had that day paid a cheque for one thousand pounds, drawn by him in favour of Simpson Pepperdine, Esquire, and that his account was now overdrawn by the sum of £187, 10s. 0d. That was all--there was not even a delicately expressed request to him to put the account in credit. Lucian could not quite realise what this letter meant; he said nothing to Haidee of it, but after breakfast next morning he drove to the bank and asked to see the manager. Once closeted with that gentleman in his private room he drew out the letter and laid it on the desk at which the manager sat. ‘I don’t quite understand this letter,’ he said. ‘Would you mind explaining it to me?’ The manager smiled.