“Now I must be off,” he said awkwardly.  “I have an appointment—­ important business.  Good night, everybody.”

He turned away and hurried from the room.  Rita flushed slightly and exchanged a glance with Sir Lucien.  Mrs. Sin, who had been watching the three intently, did not fail to perceive this glance.  Mollie Gretna characteristically said a silly thing.

“Oh!” she cried.  “I wonder whatever is the matter with him!  He looks as though he had gone mad!”

“It is perhaps his heart,” said Mrs. Sin harshly, and she raised her bold dark eyes to Sir Lucien’s face.

“Oh, please don’t talk about hearts,” cried Rita, willfully misunderstanding.  “Monte has a weak heart, and it frightens me.”

“So?” murmured Mrs. Sin.  “Poor fellow.”

“I think a weak heart is most romantic,” declared Mollie Gretna.

But Gray’s behavior had cast a shadow upon the party which even Mollie’s empty light-hearted chatter was powerless to dispel, and when, shortly after midnight, Sir Lucien drove Rita home to Prince’s Gate, they were very silent throughout the journey.  Just before the car reached the house: 

“Where does Mrs. Sin live?” asked Rita, although it was not of Mrs. Sin that she had been thinking.

“In Limehouse, I believe,” replied Sir Lucien; “at The House.  But I fancy she has rooms somewhere in town also.”

He stayed only a few minutes at Prince’s Gate, and as the car returned along Piccadilly, Sir Lucien, glancing upward towards the windows of a tall block of chambers facing the Green Park, observed a light in one of them.  Acting upon a sudden impulse, he raised the speaking-tube.

“Pull up, Fraser,” he directed.

The chauffeur stopped the car and Sir Lucien alighted, glancing at the clock inside as he did so, and smiling at his own quixotic behavior.  He entered an imposing doorway and rang one of the bells.  There was an interval of two minutes or so, when the door opened and a man looked out.

“Is that you, Willis?” asked Pyne.

“Oh, I beg pardon, Sir Lucien.  I didn’t know you in the dark.”

“Has Mr. Gray retired yet?”

“Not yet.  Will you please follow me, Sir Lucien.  The stairway lights are off.”

A few moments later Sir Lucien was shown into the apartment of Gray’s which oddly combined the atmosphere of a gymnasium with that of a study.  Gray, wearing a dressing-gown and having a pipe in his mouth, was standing up to receive his visitor, his face rather pale and the expression of his lips at variance with that in his eyes.  But: 

“Hello, Pyne,” he said quietly.  “Anything wrong—­or have you just looked in for a smoke?”

Sir Lucien smiled a trifle sadly.

“I wanted a chat, Gray,” he replied.  “I’m leaving town tomorrow, or I should not have intruded at such an unearthly hour.”

“No intrusion,” muttered Gray; “try the armchair, no, the big one.  It’s more comfortable.”  He raised his voice:  “Willis, bring some fluid!”