"I shall be sorry to disappoint his lordship, sir, but it would be impossible for me to accept another place. If you can no longer retain my services, I shall retire." "I suppose you are very rich, Ropes?" said Tony sadly. Ropes bowed. "Quite comfortably off, thank you, sir. I trust, sir, that, if you will excuse my mentioning such a matter, the question of wages will not lead you to dismiss me before it is quite convenient. I should be deeply distressed if you allowed such a consideration to influence you, sir." "You shall at least have the felicity of helping me dress for dinner, Ropes," said Tony gravely. "We will discuss these unpleasantly sordid topics to-morrow morning." Half an hour later a taxi pulled up outside Musette's house in Curzon Street, and Tony, faultlessly accoutred, stepped out. He was shown into a room on the left of the hall, where Musette, gracefully slender in a dark blue evening frock, was sitting back in an easy chair, turning over the pages of a novel. "It will be a duet," she said, holding out her hand, which Tony kissed; "poor Aunt Jemima is in bed with a headache." "A day of disasters," observed Tony. "I felt it when I got up this morning." The door opened, and a neatly dressed parlour-maid announced dinner. Musette laid down her novel and, rising from her chair, accepted his arm. "We'll hope, at all events," she said, "that the food will be an exception." They crossed the hall to the dining-room, where a small round table, bright with silver and glasses, stood out attractively against the black oak panelling of the walls. The only light came from four red-shaded candles in the centre. Musette's "impromptu feast" turned out to be a dainty little dinner which would have won the approval of Colonel Newnham Davis. Some excellent soup was followed by grilled sole, sweetbreads, and a partridge, the whole concluding with an alluring symphony on toast in which eggs and old Madeira supplied the leading motif. Assisted by a bottle of Lafitte, and a couple of glasses of "Bristol cream," Tony's immediate troubles faded luxuriously from his memory. He possessed to a supreme degree that enviable gift of living in the present, and as he chatted away cheerfully to Musette, the thought that on the morrow he would be facing an unsympathetic world without a penny in his pocket never once intruded its unpleasant image.