Sir James paused. Rising from his chair, he began to pace the large room. The immaculate butler came in, made up the fire, and placed the tea: domestic and comfortable rites, in grim contrast with the story that held the minds of Lady Lucy and her guest. She sat motionless meanwhile; the butler withdrew, and the tea remained untouched. "Sir Francis and Lady Wing--the two fiends who got possession of her--had been settled at Brighton for about a year. Their debts had obliged them to leave London, and they had not yet piled up a sufficient mountain of fresh ones to drive them out of Brighton. The man was the disreputable son of a rich and hard-working father who, in the usual way, had damned his son by removing all incentives to work, and turning him loose with a pile of money. He had married an adventuress--a girl with a music-hall history, some beauty, plenty of vicious ability, and no more conscience than a stone. They were the centre of a gambling and racing set; but Lady Wing was also a very fine musician, and it was through this talent of hers that she and Juliet Sparling became acquainted. They met, first, at a charity concert! Mrs. Sparling had a fine voice, Lady Wing accompanied her. The Wings flattered her, and professed to adore her. Her absent whimsical character prevented her from understanding what kind of people they were; and in her great ignorance of the world, combined with her love of the romantic and the extreme, she took the persons who haunted their house for Bohemians, when she should have known them--the majority of them--for scoundrels. You will remember that baccarat was then the rage. The Wings played it incessantly, and were very skilful in the decoying and plunder of young men. Juliet Sparling was soon seized by the excitement of the game, and her beauty, her evident good breeding and good faith, were of considerable use to the Wings' _ménage_. Very soon she had lost all the money that her husband had left to her credit, and her bankers wrote to notify her that she was overdrawn. A sudden terror of Sparling's displeasure seized her; she sold a bracelet, and tried to win back what she had lost. The result was only fresh loss, and in a panic she played on and on, till one disastrous night she got up from the baccarat-table heavily in debt to one or two persons, including Sir Francis Wing. With the morning came a letter from her husband, remonstrating in a rather sharp tone on what her own letters--and probably an account from some other source--had told him of her life at Brighton; insisting on the need for economy, owing to his own heavy expenses in the great excavation he was engaged upon; and expressing the peremptory hope that she would make the money he had left her last for another two months--" Sir James lingered in his walk. He stared out of window at the square garden for a few moments, then turned to look frowning at his companion.