For eight years Lawless had led an adventurous life, consorting chiefly with men who, like himself, were outside the pale of society. He had earned a livelihood how he could, sometimes working for his bread with his hands, at others fairly affluent; but improvident always, giving away recklessly in his prosperous days what later he knew he would need for himself. It was during one of his poorer periods that he had happened across Simmonds, the man who had since introduced him to Colonel Grey, and so helped him towards a good thing when his fortunes chanced to be at a particularly low ebb. The tide had turned with surprising swiftness. He found it a little difficult at first to realise this unexpected change of fortune, even more difficult to adapt himself to it. Doubtless it was the influence of Van Bleit that eventually drew him from his misanthropic habits and plunged him, somewhat reluctantly, into the vortex of Cape Town society. The Smythes and Van Bleit introduced him everywhere. Lawless had no record at the Cape. He became known as a man of means, and it was rumoured that his family held a good position in England. The fact that he was connected by marriage with the beautiful Mrs Lawless added to his popularity; and the vague information, given by a would-be know-all, that he had once been in the Army and had left under a cloud was discredited by the civilian population. But the men in the Service, especially the man at Government House who was a relation of Mrs Lawless, remembered certain things; the years that had rolled by since Lawless' disgrace were not so many as to have put the affair so entirely out of mind that by a little hard thinking the reason of his dismissal could not be recalled. It was a reason for which few men have any sympathy. But, perhaps because it is not the custom in the Service for one man to give another away, perhaps, too, because this particular man was connected, however remotely, with the most beautiful woman in Cape Town, those who remembered the facts held their peace, and the discreditable whisper died from sheer atrophy. A certain section of Cape Town society took Lawless up. Among men he was very popular, and the women decided that he was extraordinarily fascinating, if a trifle too reserved. He was a man with very little small talk. Where he recognised a sympathetic personality he left trivialities alone and plunged straightway into the depths. Every emotion he betrayed or called forth was of the most profound. Young girls found him irresistible, but, fortunately for them, he had no taste for anything but a matured intellect. He admired youth externally, but he avoided intercourse with it.