“Mr. Gratton,” smiled urbanely.  For his own part he might have been called every inch a concrete expression of suavity.  He was clad in the conventional city-dweller’s “outdoor rig.”  Shining puttees lying bravely about the shape of his leg; brown outing breeches, creased, laced at their abbreviated ends; shirt of the sport effect; a shrewd-eyed man of thirty-five with ambitions, a chalky complexion, and a very weak mouth with full red lips.

“Miss Gloria,” he whispered as he managed to have her all to himself a moment, “you’ll make me jealous.”

She was used to him saying stupid things.  Yet she laughed and seemed pleased.  Gratton egotistically supposed her thought was of him; King would have been amazed to know that she was already watching the house for his coming.  And he would have been no end amazed and bristling with defence had he glimpsed the astonishing fact that Gloria already fully and clearly meant to parade him before her summer friends as her latest and most virile admirer.  Gratton’s heavy-lidded pale eyes trailed over her speculatively.

That forenoon King shook hands with Archie, Teddy, Gratton, and the rest, made his formal bows to Gloria’s girl friends, and felt relief when the inept banalities languished and he was free to draw apart.  Gratton, with slender finger to his shadowy moustache, bore down upon him.  King did not like this suave individual; he had the habit of judging a man by first impressions and sticking stubbornly to his snap judgment until circumstance showed him to be in error.  He liked neither the way Gratton walked nor talked; he had no love for the cut of his eye; now he resented being approached when there was no call for it.  Never was there a more friendly man anywhere than Mark King when he found a soul-brother; never a more aloof at times like this one.

“I have been tremendously interested,” Gratton led off ingratiatingly, “in the things I have heard of you, Mr. King.  By George, men like you live the real life.”

The wild fancy came booming upon King to kick him over the verandah railing.

“Think so?” he said coolly, wondering despite himself what “things” Gratton had heard of him.  And from whom?  His spirit groaned within him at the thought that old Ben Gaynor had been lured into paths along which he should come to hobnob with men like Gratton.  He was sorry that he had promised to stay to lunch.  His thoughts all of a sudden were restive, flying off to Swen Brodie, to Loony Honeycutt, to what he must get done without too much delay.  Gratton startled him by speaking, bringing his thoughts back from across the ridges to the sunny verandah overlooking Lake Gloria.

Gratton was nobody’s fool, save his own, and both marked and resented King’s attitude.  His heavy lids had a fluttering way at times during which his prominent eyes seemed to flicker.

“What’s the chance with Gus Ingle’s ‘Secret’ this year, Mr. King?” he demanded silkily.