She sighed.

“Did you see Lord Arranmore this evening?”

“Yes.  He was talking to the duke just now.  What of him?”

“I have been watching him.  Did you ever see a man look so ill?”,

“He is bored,” Brooks answered, coldly.  “This sort of thing does not amuse him.”

She shook her head.

“He is always the same.  He has always that weary look.  He is living with absolute recklessness.  It cannot possibly last long.”

“He knows the price,” Brooks answered.  “He lives as he chooses.”

“I wonder,” she murmured.  “Sometimes I wonder whether we do not misjudge him—­you and I, Kingston.  For you know we have been his judges.  You must not shake your head.  It is true.  You have judged him to be unworthy of a son, and I—­I have judged him to be unworthy of a wife.  You don’t think—­that we could possibly have made a mistake—­that underneath there is a little heart left—­eaten up with pride and loneliness?”

“I have never seen,” Brooks answered, “the slightest trace of it.”

“Nor I,” she answered.  “Yet I knew him when he was young.  He was so different, and annihilation is very hard, isn’t it?  Supposing he were to die, and we were to find out afterwards?”

“You,” he said, slowly, “must be the judge of your own actions.  For my part I see in him only the man who abandoned my mother, who spent the money of other people in dissipation and worse than dissipation.  Who came to England and accepted my existence after a leisurely interval as a matter of course.  I have never seen in any one of his actions, or heard in his tone one single indication of anything save selfishness so incarnate as to have become the only moving impulse of his life.  If ever I could believe that he cared for me, would find in me anything save a convenience, I would try to forget the past.  If he would even express his sorrow for it, show himself capable of any emotion whatsoever in connection with anything or any person save himself, I would be only too thankful to escape from my ridiculous position.”

Then they were silent for a moment, each occupied with their own thoughts, and Lord Arranmore, pale and spare, taller than most men there, notwithstanding a recently-acquired stoop, came wearily over to them.

“Dear me,” he remarked, “what gloomy faces—­and I expected to see Brooks at least radiant.  Am I intruding?”

“Don’t be absurd, Arranmore,” she said kindly.  “Why don’t you bring up that chair and sit down?  You look tired.”

He laughed—­a little hardly.

“I have been tired so long,” he said, “that it has become a habit.  Brooks, will you think me guilty of an impertinence, I wonder?  I have intruded upon your concerns.”

Brooks looked up with his eyes full of questioning.  “That fellow Lavilette,” Arranmore continued, seemed worried about your anonymous subscription.  I was in an evil temper yesterday afternoon, and Verity amused me.  So I wrote and confounded the fellow by explaining that it was I who sent the money—­the thousand pounds you had.”