It would be idle to assume that a man of Guy Spencer's natural advantages had reached the age of thirty without experiencing a few affairs of the heart. But he had never been deeply touched, and his friend Tommy Esmond was right when he described him as not very susceptible to feminine influence.

The one feeling which had lasted for some years, was a pronounced affection for his cousin Nina. He felt as much at home with her as he would have done with a favourite sister, had he possessed one. But the regard had a warmth in it that is lacking in fraternal relations.

He knew that Lady Nina was not indifferent to him, that she allowed him to assume a certain air of proprietorship in the disposal of dances, in the claim to her society when he was disposed to enjoy it. He knew also that it was a match which would be warmly approved of by his invalid uncle.

Without being guilty of undue vanity, he felt pretty certain that if he proposed he would be accepted. And once or twice he had been very near to taking the decisive step. He never could quite understand what it was that made him hesitate.

The fact of his hesitation proved to himself, as well as to the young lady concerned, that much as he might like his cousin, he was certainly far from being deeply in love with her.

She was a pretty, winsome girl, possessing an upright, straightforward nature, and quite attractive in a simple, frank fashion. There was nothing subtle or mysterious about her, you could read her like an open book. She was a good daughter, she was the type of girl who could not help making a good wife.

Some day, no doubt, he would put the fateful question, and by her acceptance be made, in conventional parlance, the happiest of men. But although he would know he had chosen very wisely, and look forward to a placid kind of happiness, he was doubtful if Nina's smiles and kisses would ever thrill him, if with her he would ever learn the meaning of real love.

He was not by any means sure that he was capable of very strong attachment. He had indulged in a few fancies, but they had only exercised a very small portion of his thoughts. Up to the present, he had certainly not experienced the wild ecstasies, the mingled joy and pain of the true lover.

For the first time in his life, he had been seriously perturbed by the advent of Stella Keane. He had not fashioned in his imagination any particular ideal, any special type of woman who would make to him an irresistible appeal. But, if she had been Lady Nina, if he had met her in his own world, he would have owned at once this was the girl for whom he had been waiting.

Her image pursued him persistently in his waking and his leisure hours. He could recall every word she had spoken during the short time they had spent together. He could see her a dozen times a day standing in the "Excelsior" dining-room, paralysed with terror.

He remembered the break in her voice, the mist in her beautiful eyes, when she had thanked him. And ever and again, he longed to fathom the mystery of her loneliness, the cause of that sadness that was always lurking underneath.

Was it wise to pursue the acquaintance, with the pretty certain result of intensifying the interest he already felt in her? He had no liking for Mrs. L'Estrange, a woman merely on the fringe of his world, or her gambling circle. If he wanted to lose or win money, there were plenty of other houses where he could indulge his fancy.

And he knew nothing of Miss Keane's antecedents. The only thing he did know was that she had a cousin who was obviously a bounder of the first water. Tommy Esmond knew nothing about her either, or, if he did know, would not tell.

For three days he wavered, one moment eager to rush off to the flat, the next determining that it would be better not to renew the brief acquaintance.

On the fourth day, his impulse conquered his prudence. He told himself soothingly that his visit was due to curiosity, that he merely wanted to penetrate the mystery of her loneliness, her unprotected position.

The bounder cousin was coming out as he entered. Mr. Dutton nodded affably to him with a greasy and familiar smile. Spencer acknowledged him in the coolest fashion compatible with bare civility. Why were there people, he wondered, whom you instinctively wanted to kick, for no apparently sufficient reason?

Miss Keane was alone. Mrs. L'Estrange, she explained, was in bed with a racking headache. She had lost heavily the night before, and this was the usual penalty she paid for losing.

"Hardly worth the candle, is it?" he said lightly, as he took his cup of tea from her. A slight frown crossed his brow as he observed the empty cup of "the bounder" on the table. Did he come here often? was his thought. Perhaps he was in love with her. But it was surely beyond the limits of possibility that she could ever return the affection of such a creature.

He would see what he could get out of her. "I met your cousin as I came in. I suppose he is a frequent visitor?"

She did not look in the least conscious or embarrassed by the question. "Oh yes, he comes very often. He is about the only one of my relatives I have any acquaintance with. My father's mode of life estranged all the others."

Spencer thought it would have been a good thing if Mr. Dutton had been as sensitive to the disqualifications of the late Mr. Keane as the rest of her connections. But, of course, he could not say so.

"He is not in the least like you." Then, after a pause, he added boldly, and perhaps a little rudely: "I should never have dreamed you were related."

She quite understood what he meant, and there was a lurking humour in her smile, as she answered:

"Poor old George, he is a good sort, but quite a rough diamond. His mother married a self-made man, of course, for his money. That may account for a great deal you have noticed."

Spencer had the grace to look confused. It was evident he had conveyed his private impression of Mr. Dutton very distinctly to her clear young vision. But she did not seem offended, only slightly amused, at the poor figure cut by Cousin George in the estimation of a person in a superior world.

Anyway, that little mystery was explained. There was nothing unusual in poor gentlewomen marrying self-made men, for the sake of money. The noble family of Southleigh had many such mÉsalliances amongst its aristocratic records.

But it was a relief to find Stella herself under no delusions concerning the young man in question. He did not think it possible she could, but as diplomatically as was possible, she admitted that Mr. Dutton was not what is, technically called, a gentleman.

"He is the only relative with whom I am on speaking terms," she added, after a pause, "for reasons of which I have already given you a hint. And I think I have grown rather to look forward to his visits."

Her observant eyes noticed a quick stiffening in his manner. She could guess his thoughts. How was it possible for a refined young woman to ever look forward to the visits of a person like Mr. Dutton, cousin though he might be?

"You, of course, have heaps of relations; you can pick and choose," she went on, as if eager to explain to his fastidious taste her toleration of a man, so obviously the denizen of an inferior world. "You cannot, I daresay, imagine the loneliness of a girl of my age, debarred, through no fault of her own, from the society of her own kith and kin." Here was an opportunity to engage her in personal talk. He had not hoped she would take him into her confidence on his first visit.

He leaned forward, and there was an eager note in his voice. "I formed an idea of you in the first few moments of our acquaintance, that you were not happy, that you were, in a sense, isolated, and that you had known more of sorrow than joy in your short life."

She mused a moment, and then answered him in grave tones:

"You were quite right. I feel it is the impression I must convey to either friend or stranger, an impression I shall always convey. For, if a great and overwhelming happiness were to come to me to-morrow, I could never forget the past years of sadness."

"But, surely, you must have some happy memories? There were gleams of brightness in your childhood?"

"No," she said, and there was a fierce vehemence in her voice. "They were the most miserable—an indifferent mother, a careless father, a roof and a shelter, food and clothing sufficient, if not in abundance, but no home, as it is understood by more fortunate children."

"And when that home, or the wretched pretence of it, was broken up, you were thrown upon the mercy of the world," he questioned, "with no kindred, no friends to stretch out a helping hand?"

"Our relatives had long before ceased to take any interest in the daughter of a ruined gambler. I was thrown, in a certain sense, on the mercy of the world. But for a small pittance, which my father could not deprive me of, I should have starved, for he left nothing behind him but debts."

She was not, then, absolutely penniless. Something had been saved from the wreck. He wondered if Esmond knew this. And yet, if she told a comparative stranger this at their first real interview, she must have told him, who seemed to be on the footing of a friend of the house.

"I had no real friends," she went on; "but in the course of a wandering life—when my father owed too much in one place he removed to another—I had picked up a few acquaintances. With these I made a home, on and off, for longer or shorter periods."

"And you have come to anchor here with Mrs. L'Estrange, who is your cousin, one of the few relatives who did not visit the sins of the fathers on the children."

Her voice was a little scornful. "The cousinship is a very distant one. And, as she is an inveterate gambler herself, but more lucky than my father, she could hardly look upon gambling in another as a deadly sin." He nodded his head in agreement. He did not want to talk himself, for fear he should interrupt the flow of her reminiscences; she was evidently in a confidential mood this afternoon.

"I saw her a few times when quite a child, and then she vanished like the others. A couple of years ago, we met in Devonshire at the house of a mutual acquaintance. She seemed to take a fancy to me. In the end, she proposed that I should, for the present, make my home with her. She has only one interest in life, play. She is a very lazy woman. She hates writing the briefest note, and housekeeping is abhorrent to her. I attend to her correspondence, I order the dinner and look after the servants. I am not exactly eating the bread of charity," she concluded with a little mirthless laugh, "because I give some work in exchange for my food. My own little pittance provides me with clothes."

He wondered what the little pittance represented in annual hard cash. She was dressed quietly but in good taste, and he was judge enough of woman's apparel to know that the material of her dress was expensive. On her slender fingers glittered a few valuable rings, heirlooms probably saved from the clutches of the gambling father. She did not convey the impression of poverty, but perhaps she was clever, and knew how to make the best of a small income.

There was a long silence, and it almost seemed as if she had forgotten his presence. For she sat with a musing look in her beautiful eyes, her thoughts evidently in the past, conjuring up Heaven knows how many painful memories.

Then she came back to herself, and turned to him with an apologetic smile. "I am afraid I have bored you to tears with my stupid personal history, but I will finish by telling you one little thing that may amuse you."

He protested, of course, that he had not been in the least bored, only too painfully interested.

"Well, I am not a person easily crushed, and although a physical coward and frightened of raids and thunderstorms, I am not a moral one. When I began to review my position, I tried to hit upon some way of making money."

Was she fond of money, he wondered? Well, perhaps, like most women, she wanted money to buy herself pretty things. There was nothing unusual in that.

"When I was a schoolgirl, I was supposed to show some artistic talent; I got several prizes. So I set to work and painted some half-a-dozen small things, in what I conceived to be a popular style, and took them round to as many dealers. In a week my hopes were shattered. One straightforward creature told me frankly that they just attained the school-girl level of excellence, but that I should never become an artist. It was not in me."

"A crushing blow, indeed," said Spencer sympathetically.

"I then turned to writing. Here, at any rate, was a profession that required no previous painful training, only powers of observation, some imagination, and a certain fluency of expression. I wrote some short stories which I thought good, which I still think good. History repeated itself. I sent them to a dozen editors, one after another. In every case, they were declined with thanks."

"I daresay they were quite good, and they were not taken because you didn't happen to be in the ring," was Spencer's consoling comment.

"Well," she exclaimed brightly, "there is an end of my reminiscences for to-day. Let us talk of anything and everything else. Have you seen Mr. Esmond lately? He has not been near us since the night he came with you."

Shortly afterwards he took his leave, he had stayed unconsciously long as it was.

"I shall come again soon, if I may, to listen to some more reminiscences," he said, as he shook hands. And she had given him permission, with the brightest of smiles.

He had not learned half as much as he wanted, but he had gathered something. The bounder cousin was the son of a self-made man, a parvenu. And Stella Keane was not absolutely penniless, she had enough money to buy herself clothes. Did Tommy Esmond know as much as this? And if he did, why had he not said so?