"As you like," said the elder man. "I have no engagements yet."

Lightmark left him with a genial nod, and a moment later Rainham saw
him through the window passing with long impetuous strides across
the bridge. Then he returned to his desk, and wrote a letter or two
until the light failed, when he pushed his chair back, and sat, pen
in hand, looking meditatively, vaguely, at the antiquated maps upon
the walls.

Presently his eye fell on Lightmark's derelict paper, with its
scribble of a girl's head. He considered it thoughtfully for some
time, starting a little, and covering it with his blotting-paper,
when Mrs. Bullen, his housekeeper, entered with a cup of tea--a
freak of his nerves which made him smile when she had gone.

Even then he left his tea for a long time, cooling and untasted,
while he sat lethargically lolling back, and regarding from time to
time the pencilled profile with his sad eyes.



CHAPTER II


The period of Lightmark's boyhood had not been an altogether happy
one. His earliest recollections carried him back to a time when he
lived a wandering, desolate life with his father and mother, in an
endless series of Continental hotels and _pensions_. He was prepared
to assert, with confidence, that his mother had been a very