"'Respekted and Honerd Sir'--can't spell, anyhow," he read out. "'The money as you scent save my wife an' children from blank starvayshion"'--he turned round and looked at Marmaduke reproachfully. "And you owe me five pounds, you d----d Christian philanthropist." Marmaduke Muir gave an apologetic laugh. "The poor devil was in my regiment once--and as for the five pounds, here you are. I had a stroke of luck down in Norfolk at loo----" "Save you from 'blank starvayshion,' eh, Mac?" growled a man who also owed money in the same quarter, whereat there was a general laugh, for Major Macdonald was known to be near. Marmaduke, opening his letters rapidly, put most of them into the waste-paper basket. Invitations from people he scarcely knew to balls and dances, others to festivities past and gone. Some few he put in his pocket, and one he sat and stared at as he smoked his cigar. Luncheon--one o'clock--there was plenty of time; and Louisa Marchioness of Broadway was the most amusing old lady in town. An old friend of his father's, too, though that wasn't in her favour. Still she was interested in the family, and had always been particularly kind to him. An hour later, therefore, he sat waiting his hostess' appearance in the tiny drawing-room of one of that row of tiny houses which, till a very few years ago, stood back from Knightsbridge Road, separated from it by a tiny secluded carriage-drive of their own and opening out with little narrow strips of back gardens to the park. He was seated at the window, but it seemed to him as if he were close to the roaring fire; indeed, all things were close to each other in the small room where the big, central, mid-Victorian table, with its broidered tablecloth, solitary vase of flowers, and besprinkling books of beauty seemed to monopolise all space. One of these same books of beauty lay open at a simpering bottlenecked portrait subscribed in a fine feminine hand, "Louisa Broadway." It always did; the servant had orders to that effect. "_À la bonheur, monsieur!_" came a voice from the door. It was the most ancient thing about Louisa Marchioness of Broadway. All else was open to manipulation and the manipulation was good. She did not, however, dye her hair. Spiteful folk said it was because powder had been the fashion when she was in the heyday of her beauty; but she was a very clever lady, and doubtless she realised how much more real a make-up seems when toned to white hair than to dark. As it was, the effect was still charming, and her figure was that of a girl of eighteen. "_A moi l'honneur_," quoth Marmaduke gallantly, as he advanced to kiss the old lady's outstretched hand and lead her to a chair. In a certain set at that time there was a fashion for interpolating French into English--one of the signs of the coming war which was darkening the horizon of Europe.