"Well," he said wearily, "Rathbone was a good fellow, no doubt, but he is a young man, and no girl really knows what the life of a young man really is or may be. I know that Charliewood introduced Rathbone to a certain girl. Oh, Marjorie, I can't go on, these suspicions are unworthy." "Terribly unworthy," she cried, standing up to her full height, and then in a moment she drooped to him, and once more she asked him to go on. He told her of certain meetings, saying that there could have been, of course, no harm in them, skilfully hinting at this or that, and then testifying to his utter disbelief in the suspicions that he himself had provoked. She listened to him, growing whiter and whiter. At last his hesitating speech died away into silence, and she stood looking at him. "It might be," she whispered, half to herself, "it might be, but I do not think it _could_ be. No man could be so unutterably cruel, so unutterably base. I have made you tell me this, William, and I know that you yourself do not believe it. He could not be so wicked as to sacrifice everything for one of those people." And then Sir William rose. "No," he said, "he couldn't. I feel it, though I don't know him. Marjorie, no living man could leave you for one of the vulgar syrens of the half world." She looked at him for a moment as he put the thing in plain language, and then burst into a passion of weeping. "I can't bear any more, William," she said between her sobs. "Go now, but find him. Oh, find him!" CHAPTER X A MAN ABOUT TOWN PAYS A DEBT The people in the luxurious smoking-room of the great Palace Hotel saw a pale, ascetic-looking and very distinguished man come in to the comfortable place and sit down upon a lounge. "Do you know who that is?" one man whispered to another, flicking the ash off a cigar. "No; who is he?" his companion answered. "That's Sir William Gouldesbrough." "Oh, the great scientific Johnny, you mean." "Yes, they say that he is going to turn the world topsy-turvy before he's done." "The world's good enough for me," was the reply, "and if I'd my way, these people who invent things should all be taken out and shot. I'm tired of inventions, they make life move too quickly. The good old times were best, when it took eight hours to get from Brighton to London, and one could not have telegrams from one's office to worry one." "Perhaps you're right," said the first man. "But still, people look at things differently now-a-days. At any rate, Gouldesbrough is said to be one of the leading men in England to-day." "He doesn't look happy over it," replied his companion. "He looks like a death's-head." "Well, you know, he's mixed up in the Rathbone mystery in a sort of way." "Oh yes, of course; he was engaged to the girl who chucked him over for the Johnny who has disappeared, wasn't he?" "That's it. Just watch him, poor wretch; doesn't he look pipped?"