The suspicion, that was destined gradually to become a settled belief in Arthur’s mind, that the man in whose power he knew himself to be was a villain of the least creditable die, was anything but agreeable. Pondering on this certainty, he, as he sauntered with lingering steps towards the splendid home which, in right of his wife, he called his own, felt about as unhappy a young aristocrat as ever trod the broad flagstones of the Tyburnian pavement. His furious indignation against the rascal by whom he had been deceived passes the bounds of description. Had Fred Norcott chanced at that moment to present himself within his reach, there is no saying to what lengths the passion of the younger man might have led him. But happily the Colonel--his faithful wife by his side, his ill-gotten gains in his pocket, and his unrepented sins upon his head--was far away by that time--far away to the land where roguery is at a premium, and cheating is dignified by the agreeable name of “smartness”--to the land where to be a villain is no disgrace, and where every sin save that of failure is condoned and pardoned. * * * * * “Now, Atty, let me look at you again--I am sure that something is the matter--_quite_ sure. Daddy dear, doesn’t Arthur look worried? And he _will_ go out so early. I thought you _would_ stay just a tiny half-hour till I have had my arrowroot, but--” “Stay, dear--of course I will, if you wish it,” Arthur replied in answer to his wife’s appeal, spoken in the low and feeble voice which made her faintest wish a law. “I _was_ going out on business, but I can put it off till the afternoon,” and he tried to speak as if the sacrifice were no sacrifice, and as if acting the part of deputy sick-nurse was quite in the usual course of events for a young man about town, who had but lately completed his twenty-second year. Sophy was, as I have said, the least selfish of human beings--she would at all times have been ready to make any sacrifice for those she loved; but a young heiress smiling over her first-born babe may be pardoned if for once in her life she failed to see that her exacting wishes militated against those of her husband, and if, while she rejoiced over the happy consciousness of his devotion, she forgot that he might have other duties to perform and other interests at stake than the one to which her entreaty had devoted him. It was late in the afternoon before Arthur Vavasour, seizing the opportunity of a sound sleep into which the invalid had fallen, stole from the pretty morning-room adjoining that where his wife lay, stepping softly; for old Duberly--who dearly loved, after the fashion of the aged, to _talk_--might, had he heard his step upon the stairs, have intercepted his departure, and, slipping his bald head out of the half-opened study-door, have chained him--an unwilling listener--for an hour at least, in the close and stuffy atmosphere of his private sanctum.