white ball and not poor Adrian’s skull.  If ever a man was loyal to a dead friend Jaffery Chayne was loyal to Adrian Boldero.  But poor old Jaffery was being checked in every vital avenue, not by the memory of the man whom he had known and loved, but by his cynical and masquerading ghost.  It is not given to me, thank God! to know from direct speech what Jaffery thought of Adrian—­for Jaffery is too splendid a fellow to have ever said a word in depreciation of his once living friend and afterward dead rival; but both I, who do not aspire to these Quixotic heights and only, with masculine power of generalisation, deduce results from a quiet eye’s harvest of mundane phenomena, and Barbara, whose rapier intuition penetrates the core of spiritual things, could, with little difficulty, divine the passionate struggle between love and hatred, between loyalty and tenderness, between desire and duty that took place in the soul of this chivalrous yet primitive and vastly appetited gentleman.

You may think I am trying to present Jaffery as a hero of romance.  I am not.  I am merely trying to put before you, in my imperfect way, a barbarian at war with civilised instincts; a lusty son of Pantagruel forced into the incongruous role of Sir Galahad. . . .  During the term of his punishment he behaved in a bearish and most unheroic manner.  At last, however, Doria forgave him, and, smiling on him once more, permitted him to read Tolstoi aloud to her.  Whereupon he mended his manners.

The day following this reconciliation was a Sunday.  We had invited Liosha (as we constantly did) to lunch and dine.  She usually arrived by an early train in the forenoon and returned by the late train at night.  But on Saturday evening, she asked Barbara, over the telephone, for permission to bring a friend, a gentleman staying in the boarding house, the happy possessor of a car, who would motor her down.  His name was Fendihook.  Barbara replied that she would be delighted to see Liosha’s friend, and of course came back to us and speculated as to who and what this Mr. Fendihook might be.

“Why didn’t you ask her?” said I.

“It would scarcely have been polite.”

We consulted Jaffery.  “Never heard of him,” he growled.  “And I don’t like to hear of him now.  That young woman’s running loose a vast deal too much.”

“What an old dog in the manger you are!” cried Barbara; and thus started an old argument.

On Sunday morning we saw Mr. Fendihook for ourselves.  I met the car, a two-seater, which he drove himself, at the front door, and perceived between a motoring cap worn peak behind and a tightly buttoned Burberry coat a pink, fleshy, clean shaven face, from the middle of which projected an enormous cigar.  I helped Liosha out.

“This is Mr. Fendihook.”

“Commonly called Ras Fendihook, at your service,” said he.

I smiled and shook hands and gave the car into the charge of my chauffeur, who appeared from the stable-yard.  In the hall, aided by Franklin, Mr. Ras Fendihook divested himself of his outer wrappings and revealed a thickset man of medium height, rather flashily attired.  I know it is narrow-minded, but I have a prejudice against a black and white check suit, and a red necktie threaded through a gold ring.