“I am afraid you will think that what I have to tell is very insignificant,” she confessed. “Victor was one of those boys who always fancied themselves bored. He was bored with polo, bored with motoring, bored with the country and bored with town. Then quite suddenly during the last few weeks he seemed changed. All that he would tell me was that he had found a new interest in life. I don't know what it was but I don't think it was a nice one. He seemed to drop all his old friends, too, and go about with a new set altogether--not a nice set at all. He used to stay out all night, and he quite gave up going to dances and places where he could take me. Once or twice he came here in the afternoon, dead beat, without having been to bed at all, and before he could say half-a-dozen words he was asleep in my easy-chair. He used to mutter such horrible things that I had to wake him up.” “Was he ever short of money?” Francis asked. She shook her head. “Not seriously,” she answered. “He was quite well-off, besides what his people allowed him. I was going to have a wonderful settlement as soon as our engagement was announced. However, to go on with what I was telling you, the very night before--it happened--he came in to see me, looking like nothing on earth. He cried like a baby, behaved like a lunatic, and called himself all manner of names. He had had a great deal too much to drink, and I gathered that he had seen something horrible. It was then he asked me to dine with him the next night, and told me that he was going to break altogether with his new friends. Something in connection with them seemed to have given him a terrible fright.” Francis nodded. He had the tact to abandon his curiosity at this precise point. “The old story,” he declared, “bad company and rotten habits. I suppose some one got to know that the young man usually carried a great deal of money about with him.” “It was so foolish of him,” she assented eagerly: “I warned him about it so often. The police won't listen to it but I am absolutely certain that he was robbed. I noticed when he paid the bill that he had a great wad of bank-notes which were never discovered afterwards.” Francis rose to his feet. “What are you doing to-night?” he enquired. “Nothing,” she acknowledged eagerly. “Then let's dine somewhere and see the show at the Frivolity,” he suggested. “You dear man!” she assented with enthusiasm. “The one thing I wanted to do, and the one person I wanted to do it with.” CHAPTER XII