associate with fellows like you?"

"I guess you'd find it difficult," drawled Nap.

He still stood with his back to the tea-table. He seemed to have
forgotten the woman who sat so rigid behind him. His fingers drummed a
careless tattoo upon the table-edge. He was unquestionably master of the
situation, and that without much apparent effort.

And Sir Giles knew it, knew himself to be worsted, and that in his
wife's presence. He glanced at her through eyes narrowed to evil slits.
Her very impassivity goaded him. It seemed in some fashion to express
contempt. With violence he strode to the bell and pealed it vigorously.

On the instant Nap turned. "So long, Lady Carfax!"

She looked up at him. Her lips said nothing, but for that instant her
eyes entreated, and his eyes made swift response.

He was smiling with baffling good humour as he turned round to Sir Giles.

"Good-bye, sir! Delighted to have met you. I'll give your message to my
brother. It'll amuse him."

He departed without a backward glance as the servant opened the door,
elaborately deaf to Sir Giles's half-strangled reply that he might go to
the devil and take his brother with him.

He left dead silence in the room behind him, but the moment that the
clang of the front door told of his final exit the storm burst.