The sovereign was already in his hand, and now his face suffused.  He seemed anxious to get away, and looked round for his cap.  He couldn’t do here what he wanted to do.  He felt that he must burst.

“Now, off you go.  And you be here at nine o’clock on Sunday-week with the papers, and tell me what you’ve done.”

“Gawd—­my Gawd!” said the lad, huskily.  The next minute he was out in the hall, and the door was shut behind him.  A moment later, hearing a whoop, Stafford went to the window and, looking down, he saw his late visitor turning a cart-wheel under the nose of a policeman, and then, with another whoop, shooting down into the Mall, making Lambeth way.

With a smile he turned from the window.  “Well, we shall see,” he said.  “Perhaps it will be my one lucky speculation.  Who knows—­who knows!”

His eye caught the portrait of Al’mah on the mantelpiece.  He went over and stood looking at it musingly.

“You were a good girl,” he said, aloud.  “At any rate, you wouldn’t pretend.  You’d gamble with your immortal soul, but you wouldn’t sell it—­not for three millions, not for a hundred times three millions.  Or is it that you are all alike, you women?  Isn’t there one of you that can be absolutely true?  Isn’t there one that won’t smirch her soul and kill the faith of those that love her for some moment’s excitement, for gold to gratify a vanity, or to have a wider sweep to her skirts?  Vain, vain, vain—­and dishonourable, essentially dishonourable.  There might be tragedies, but there wouldn’t be many intrigues if women weren’t so dishonourable—­the secret orchard rather than the open highway and robbery under arms....  Whew, what a world!”

He walked up and down the room for a moment, his eyes looking straight before him; then he stopped short.  “I suppose it’s natural that, coming back to England, I should begin to unpack a lot of old memories, empty out the box-room, and come across some useless and discarded things.  I’ll settle down presently; but it’s a thoroughly useless business turning over old stock.  The wise man pitches it all into the junk-shop, and cuts his losses.”

He picked up the Morning Post and glanced down the middle page—­the social column first—­with the half-amused reflection that he hadn’t done it for years, and that here were the same old names reappearing, with the same brief chronicles.  Here, too, were new names, some of them, if not most of them, of a foreign turn to their syllables—­New York, Melbourne, Buenos Ayres, Johannesburg.  His lip curled a little with almost playful scorn.  At St. Petersburg, Vienna, and elsewhere he had been vaguely conscious of these social changes; but they did not come within the ambit of his daily life, and so it had not mattered.  And there was no reason why it should matter now.  His England was a land the original elements of which would not change, had not changed; for the old small inner circle had not been invaded, was still impervious to the wash of wealth and snobbery and push.  That refuge had its sequestered glades, if perchance it was unilluminating and rather heavily decorous; so that he could let the climbers, the toadies, the gold-spillers, and the bribers have the middle of the road.