him, even though to that pride he principally looked for his own safety. But might not Miles unintentionally blunder and blurt out the secret? He had been hot-headed and violent of speech as a boy, and his conduct at Carabas House on the introduction had proved that he had no command over his feelings. This was what it was to have to do with fools. And then Gilbert Lloyd recollected that, on the only other occasion in his life when the chance of compromising his future was in the hands of another person, it was his wife to whom the chance was allotted; and he remembered the perfect security which he felt in her sense and discretion. His wife! He had not thought of her for a very long time. He wondered where she was and what she was doing. He wondered whether she had altered in personal appearance, whether anyone else had--pshaw! what the deuce did it matter to him? Nevertheless, he angrily quickened the step with which he was pacing the room as the thought crossed his mind. O no, Miles would not betray him! There were other reasons why he should not. Did he not--perhaps it was a mistake after all his having broken with Gertrude in that manner? She would have been in his way here and there, perhaps; but she was wonderfully accommodating, even in letting him have his own way so far as coming and going were concerned; and how shrewd and clear-headed she was! So good-looking, too! He found himself idly tracing her profile with his finger on the table in front of him. Strange girl--what an odd light there was on her face that--that night when they parted! And Harvey Gore--O, good Lord! what had started that vein of thought? That confounded meeting with Miles had upset him entirely. Harvey Gore!--did Gertrude suspect--she knew. He was certain, she knew, and that was what--It was for the best that he had got rid of her; for the best that he was on his own hook--only himself to consult and rely upon, and no one else with a chance of selling him. All women were unreliable, and interfered with business. By the way, what was that Ticehurst was saying as they came away in the brougham about some woman who had sung in the early part of the evening, before he got to Carabas House? Ticehurst was wonderfully enthusiastic for him--such a face, such a figure, such a lovely voice! These raptures meant nothing serious, Gilbert supposed; at all events he intended to take care that they should mean nothing serious. That affair of Eugénie de Meronville, when Ticehurst's admiration very nearly brought him under an infuriated Frenchman's fire, had been of infinite service, Gilbert reflected with a grin, in cooling his lordship's love ardour, and indeed had kept him very much aloof from the sex. It was better so; if Lord Ticehurst married, more than half Gilbert Lloyd's influence would be gone, if indeed the turf were not abandoned, and the "confederate" _chasséd_; and any other arrangement in which a woman might be concerned would be equally unsatisfactory.