"You know how erratic Tibbie always is," I remarked. "I've perhaps known her longer than you have. She was always the same, even as a girl--the despair of the old viscount." "And yet she is very charming, don't you think so?" asked the man whom she declared to be one of her bitterest enemies. "Delightfully amusing," I agreed. "The set she mixes with spoils her. If she could only sever herself entirely from Cynthia's friends she would be a very different woman." "Oh, she'll marry some day and settle down," laughed Winsloe. "I used at one time to hear that you were likely to be the lucky man." "I think not," was my quick reply, somewhat annoyed at his remark. "I can't afford to marry," whereat he laughed, as though in disbelief of my poverty. He questioned me with a subtle ingenuity worthy of a counsel at the criminal bar, but my replies were all of them empty ones, while at the same time I was watching him narrowly, noting that this warm friendliness was merely assumed, and that beneath that veneer of good fellowship was a fierce and bitter antagonism that I had never before suspected. Ever since Scarcliff had introduced us eighteen months ago we had been very good friends, and had seen quite a good deal of each other on the Riviera the previous season. I was staying at the Metropole at Monte Carlo, while he was at the Hermitage. He seemed to have many friends there, well-dressed men whom I did not know. But one's acquaintances on the Riviera are generally somewhat doubtful, and need not be recognised beyond the confines of the Principality. He became one of Jack's most intimate friends. They often went over to Paris together, and on such occasions it was believed that young Lord Scarcliff played baccarat at a certain private house in the Avenue Kleber and lost considerable sums. Tibbie had told me so in confidence, but Jack naturally never mentioned his losses. If this were true, then it looked very much as though Ellice Winsloe was a shark, as my friend Domville declared him to be. In a London club a white shirt and well-cut evening clothes enables many a scoundrel to pass himself off as a gentleman. Few young men who come into their inheritance and lead the fevered life of the West End escape the traps laid for them by those well-dressed blackguards who pose as friends and advisers, and at the same time cleverly contrive to pluck the pigeon. By some clever ruse or other they get him into their power, threatening exposure or the police for some fancied offence, and then the question of hush-money is mooted and the rest is so very easy. The fly is caught in the net, and the spiders grow fat at their leisure. Ask any official at Scotland Yard, and what he will reveal to you regarding this will surely astound you. Sitting with Winsloe and listening to his clever chatter I was rather amused than otherwise. Inwardly I laughed at his shrewd but futile efforts to obtain from me something concerning Tibbie.