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They had planned to go for a spin in Mortimer's motor after dinner, but in view of the Quarrier fiasco neither was in the

Mortimer, as usual, ate and drank heavily He was a carnivorous man, and liked plenty of thick, fat, underdone meat As for Lydia, her appetite was as erratic as her own impulses Her table, alastefully elaborate, no doubt furnished subsistence for all the relatives of her household below stairs, and left sufficient for any ambitious butler to make a decent profit on

"Do you know, Leroy," she observed, as they left the table and sauntered back into the pale blue drawing-room, "do you know that the servants haven't been paid for three months?"

"Oh, for Heaven's sake," he expostulated, "don't begin that sort of thing! I get enough of that at hoet it every time I show my nose!"

"I only ht It isn't any pleasanter for me than for you In fact, I'ainst it every day of ets it before he can sidestep When a ht to touch"

"You had an opportunity to make Howard pay you back"

"Didn't I tell you Ito do?"

"Do?"

"Of course You are going to do soreen rooth of a beautiful Kerround of ivory--lovely, but doomed to fade sooner than the pretty woman who trod it with restless, silk-shod feet

Mortimer had not responded to her last question She said presently: "You have never told me how you intend tovery red

"I said that you haven't yet told me how you intend towith your stock"

"I don't exactly know myself," admitted Mortimer, still overflushed "I mean to put it to him squarely, as a debt of honour that he owes I asked him whether to invest Damn him! he never warned me not to He is morally responsible Any man ould sit there and nodall the while what he was doing to wreck the company, and let a friend put into a rotten concern all the cash he could scrape together, is a swindler!"

"I think so too," she said, studying the rose arabesques in the rug