quality that lurked subtly in his aspect, he was not repulsive to look upon.  His features were delicate enough, his restless mouth was even pretty, and his carriage graceful.  He had little of the coarseness of industrialism—­probably because he was not industrial.  His age was about twenty, and he might have sold Signals in the street, or run illegal errands for street-bookmakers.  At any rate, it was certain that he was not above earning a chance copper from a customer of the “Three Tuns.”  His clear destiny was never to inspire respect or trust, nor to live regularly (save conceivably in prison), nor to do any honest daily labour.  And if he did not know this, he felt it.  All his movements were those of an outcast who both feared and execrated the organism that was rejecting him.

Louis, elegant, self-possessed, and superior, passed into the parlour exactly as if the messenger had been invisible.  He was separated from the messenger by an immeasurable social prestige.  He was raised to such an altitude above the messenger that he positively could not see the messenger with the naked eye.  And yet for one fraction of a second he had the illusion of being so intimately akin to the messenger that a mere nothing might have pushed him into those vile clothes and endowed him with that furtive look and that sinister aspect of a helot.  For one infinitesimal instant he was the messenger; and shuddered.  Then the illusion as swiftly faded, and—­such being Louis’ happy temperament—­was forgotten.  He disappeared into the parlour, took a piece of paper and an envelope from the small writing-table behind Rachel’s chair, and wrote a short note to Julian—­a note from which facetiousness was not absent—­inviting him to come at once.  He rang the bell.  Mrs. Tams entered, full of felicity because the great altercation was over and concord established.

“Give this to that chap,” said Louis, casually imperative, holding out the note but scarcely glancing at Mrs. Tams.

“Yes, sir,” said Mrs. Tarns with humble eagerness, content to be a very minor tool in the hidden designs of the exalted.

“And then you can go to bed.”

“Oh!  It’s of no consequence, I’m sure, sir,” Mrs. Tams answered.

Louis heard her say importantly and condescendingly to the messenger—­

“Here ye are, young man.”

She shut the front door as though much relieved to get such a source of peril and infection out of the respectable house.

Immediately afterwards strange things happened to Louis in the parlour.  He had intended to return at once to his wife in order to continue the vague, staggered conversation about Julian’s thunderbolt.  But he discovered that he could not persuade himself to rejoin Rachel.  A self-consciousness, growing every moment more acute and troublesome, prevented him from so doing.  He was afraid that he could not discuss the vanished money without blushing, and it happened rarely that he lost control of his features,