Mr. Lavington advanced with an air of recovered composure.  He seated himself, picked up his napkin, and consulted the gold-monogrammed menu.  “No, don’t bring back the filet....  Some terrapin; yes....”  He looked affably about the table.  “Sorry to have deserted you, but the storm has played the deuce with the wires, and I had to wait a long time before I could get a good connection.  It must be blowing up for a blizzard.”

“Uncle Jack,” young Rainer broke out, “Mr. Grisben’s been lecturing me.”

Mr. Lavington was helping himself to terrapin.  “Ah—­what about?”

“He thinks I ought to have given New Mexico a show.”

“I want him to go straight out to my nephew at Santa Paz and stay there till his next birthday.”  Mr. Lavington signed to the butler to hand the terrapin to Mr. Grisben, who, as he took a second helping, addressed himself again to Rainer.  “Jim’s in New York now, and going back the day after to-morrow in Olyphant’s private car.  I’ll ask Olyphant to squeeze you in if you’ll go.  And when you’ve been out there a week or two, in the saddle all day and sleeping nine hours a night, I suspect you won’t think much of the doctor who prescribed New York.”

Faxon spoke up, he knew not why.  “I was out there once:  it’s a splendid life.  I saw a fellow—­oh, a really bad case—­who’d been simply made over by it.”

“It does sound jolly,” Rainer laughed, a sudden eagerness of anticipation in his tone.

His uncle looked at him gently.  “Perhaps Grisben’s right.  It’s an opportunity——­”

Faxon looked up with a start:  the figure dimly perceived in the study was now more visibly and tangibly planted behind Mr. Lavington’s chair.

“That’s right, Frank:  you see your uncle approves.  And the trip out there with Olyphant isn’t a thing to be missed.  So drop a few dozen dinners and be at the Grand Central the day after to-morrow at five.”

Mr. Grisben’s pleasant gray eye sought corroboration of his host, and Faxon, in a cold anguish of suspense, continued to watch him as he turned his glance on Mr. Lavington.  One could not look at Lavington without seeing the presence at his back, and it was clear that, the next minute, some change in Mr. Grisben’s expression must give his watcher a clue.

But Mr. Grisben’s expression did not change:  the gaze he fixed on his host remained unperturbed, and the clue he gave was the startling one of not seeming to see the other figure.

Faxon’s first impulse was to look away, to look anywhere else, to resort again to the champagne glass the watchful butler had already brimmed; but some fatal attraction, at war in him with an overwhelming physical resistance, held his eyes upon the spot they feared.

The figure was still standing, more distinctly, and therefore more resemblingly, at Mr. Lavington’s back; and while the latter continued to gaze affectionately at his nephew, his counterpart, as before, fixed young Rainer with eyes of deadly menace.