“I can turn that tide: I can make things come my way,” he said. “All they want is sensation, it isn’t morals that concerns them. Well, IT give them sensation. They expect me to hide, and drop out of the game. Never--so help me Heaven! I’ll play it so they’ll forget this!” He rolled and lighted a cigarette, and went again to the chateau. Dinner was ready--had been ready for some time. He sat down, and presently Andree came. There was a look in her face that he could not understand. They ate their dinner quietly, not mentioning the events of the afternoon. Presently a telegram was brought to him. It read: “Come. My office, Downing Street, Friday. Expect you.” It was signed “Faramond.” At the same time came letters: from his grandfather, from Captain Maudsley. The first was stern, imperious, reproachful.--Shame for those that took him in and made him, a ruined reputation, a spoiled tradition: he had been but a heathen after all! There was only left to bid him farewell, and to enclose a cheque for two thousand pounds. Captain Maudsley called him a fool, and asked him what he meant to do--hoped he would give up the woman at once, and come back. He owed something to his position as Master of the Hounds--a tradition that oughtn’t to be messed about. There it all was: not a word about radical morality or immorality; but the tradition of Family, the Commons, Master of the Hounds! But there was another letter. He did not recognise the handwriting, and the envelope had a black edge. He turned it over and over, forgetting that Andree was watching him. Looking up, he caught her eyes, with their strange, sad look. She guessed what was in these letters. She knew English well enough to under stand them. He interpreted her look, and pushed them over. “You may read them, if you wish; but I wouldn’t, if I were you.” She read the telegram first, and asked who “Faramond” was. Then she read Sir William Belward’s letter, and afterwards Captain Maudsley’s. “It has all come at once,” she said: “the girl and these! What will you do? Give ‘the woman’ up for the honour of the Master of the Hounds?” The tone was bitter, exasperating. Gaston was patient. “What do you think, Andree?” “It has only begun,” she said. “Wait, King of Ys. Read that other letter.” Her eyes were fascinated by the black border. He opened it with a strange slowness. It began without any form of address, it had the superscription of a street in Manchester Square: