The major still seemed uncomfortably conscious of the irregularity of the position. "Really I hardly know what to say; but if it is the general wish that this lady shall remain----" Mr. Tickell took upon himself to answer before the sentence was concluded. "Of course it's the general wish; we are only too glad to have Miss Forster among us. Miss Forster, won't you have a chair?" The lady declined; she said she would rather stand. One person declared himself to be in disagreement with Mr. Tickell--Anthony Dodwell. "Without intending the least discourtesy, I cannot admit that Draycott is entitled to introduce his lady friends where no ladies are allowed, even if the intruder is Miss Forster." "Then in that case you are one against all the rest of us, so you don't count. Now, Noel, what is it all about? Cut it as short as you can, old man, and then, as Reith puts it, if Miss Forster will allow us, we will take her somewhere where she will feel more at home." Thus urged, Mr. Draycott prefaced his story with a few outspoken, candid words; every eye was fixed upon him, and all was still. "The story which I am about to tell you is not very much to my credit, nor to that of others; I don't propose to try to excuse myself in any way whatever; I'll just say my say straight out." He paused for a second as if to get his words into proper sequence. "I can tell you the first part in half a dozen sentences; in fact, in one: That night when Sydney Beaton was accused of cheating, he never did cheat, and we behaved as we did to an innocent man." Mr. Tickell broke out the moment the words were uttered. "If I haven't felt it in my bones; the very next morning in bed I began to feel it; I've not been easy in my mind ever since. Now, Dodwell, what do you say to that?" "I say that, for reasons of his own, Draycott says the thing which is not; you all heard what he said that night." "What I said then was a lie; one for which I deserve all that I am likely to get. I behaved all through like a blackguard--that's what I want to tell you." "You may put it either way you like," sneered Anthony Dodwell; "it is plain to the meanest intelligence that you behaved like a blackguard whichever way you put it. Either you were lying then, or you're lying now; from neither predicament do you come out nicely." Draycott ignored the other's words. "Dodwell owed Beaton a grudge, and I owed Dodwell money, or at least, he said I did." "You're a pretty bounder--I said you did!" "He said I did. As a matter of fact, I don't believe that I owed him a farthing; but he made out that I owed him a lot, more than I could pay without going to the Jews, which I had promised my father I never would do. I didn't want to have a row, or a scandal; I've seen since what a fool I was, but it seemed to me then that he had got me under his thumb. He had, as I said, a grudge against Beaton; that was about some money which he said Beaton owed him and which Beaton wouldn't pay."