Lord Ascot, with his umbrella over his shoulder, swung on down the street, south-westward. The town was pleasant in the higher parts, and so he felt inclined to prolong his walk. He turned to the right into Park Lane.

He was a remarkable-looking man. So tall, so broad, with such a mighty chest, and such a great, red, hairless, cruel face above it, that people, when he paused to look about him, as he did at each street comer, turned to look at him. He did not notice it; he was used to it. And, besides, as he walked there were two or three words ringing yet in his ears which made him look less keenly than usual after the handsome horses and pretty faces which he met in his walk.

“Oh, Ascot, Ascot! will nothing save you from the terrible hereafter?”

“Confound those old women, more particularly when hey take to religion. Always croaking. And grandma Ascot, too, as plucky and good an old soul as any in England — as good a judge of a horse as William Day — taking to that sort of thing. Hang it! it was unendurable. It was bad taste, you know, putting such ideas into a fellow’s head. London was dull enough after Paris, without that.”

So thought Lord Ascot, as he stood in front of Dudley House, and looked southward. The winter sun was feebly shining where he was, but to the south there was a sea of fog, out of which rose the Wellington statue, looking more exasperating than ever, and the two great houses at the Albert Gate.

“This London is a beastly hole,” said he. “I have got to go down into that cursed fog. I wish Tattersalls’ was anywhere else.” But he shouldered his umbrella again, and on he went.

Opposite St. George’s Hospital there were a number of medical students. Two of them, regardless of the order which should always be kept on her Majesty’s highway, were wrestling. Lord Ascot paused for a moment to look at them. He heard one of the students who were looking on say to another, evidently about himself:

“By Gad! what preparations that fellow would cut up into.”

“All!” said another, “and wouldn’t he cuss and d —— under operation neither.”

“I know who that is,” said a third. “That’s Lord Ascot; the most infernal, headlong, gambling savage in the three kingdoms.”

So Lord Ascot, in the odour of sanctity, passed down into Tattersalls’ yard. There was no one in the rooms. He went out into the yard again.

“Hullo, you sir! Have you seen Mr. Sloane?”

“Mr. Sloane was here not ten minutes ago, my lord. He thought your lordship was not coming. He is gone down to the Groom’s Arms.”

“Where the deuce is that?”

“In Chapel Street, at the corner of the mews, my lord. Fust turning on the right, my lord.”

Lord Ascot had business with our old acquaintance Mr. Sloane, and went on. When he came to the public-house mentioned (the very same one in which the Servants’ Club was held, to which Charles belonged), he went into the bar, and asked of a feeble-minded girl, left accidentally in charge of the bar — “Where was Mr. Sloane?” And she said, “Upstairs, in the club-room.”

Lord Ascot walked up to the club-room, and looked in at the glass door. And there he saw Sloane. He was standing up, with his hand on a man’s shoulder. ho had a map before Mm. Eight and left of these two men were two other men, an old one and a young one, and the four faces were close together; and while he watched them, the man with the map before him looked up, and Lord Ascot saw Charles Ravenshoe, pale and wan, looking like death itself, but still Charles Ravenshoe in the body.

He did not open the door. He turned away, went down into the street, and set his face northward.

So he was alive, and — There were more things to follow that “and ” than he had time to think of at first He had a cunning brain. Lord Ascot, but he could not get at his position at first. The whole business was too unexpected — he had not time to realize it.

The afternoon was darkening as he turned his steps northwards, and began to walk rapidly, with scowling face and compressed lips. One or two of the students still lingered on the steps of the hospital. The one who had mentioned him by name before said to his fellows, “Look at that Lord Ascot. What a devil he looks. He has lost some money. Gad! there’ll be murder done tonight. They oughtn’t to let such fellows go loose!”

Charles Ravenshoe alive. And Lord Saltire’s will. Half a million of money. And Charley Ravenshoe, the best old cock in the three kingdoms. Of all his villanies — and, God forgive him, they were many — the one that weighed heaviest on his heart was his treatment of Charles. And now —

The people turned and looked after him as he hurled along. Why did his wayward feet carry him to the corner of Curzon Street? That was not his route to St. John’s Wood. The people stared at the great red-faced giant, who paused against the lamp-post irresolute, biting his upper lip till the blood came. How would they have stared if they had seen what I see.*

* Perhaps a reference to “The Wild Huntsman ” will stop all criticism at this point. A further reference to “Faust” will also show that I am in good company.

There were two angels in the street that wretched winter afternoon, who had followed Lord Ascot in his headlong course, and paused here. He could see them but dimly, or only guess at their existence, but I can see them plainly enough.

One was a white angel, beautiful to look at, who stood a little way off, beckoning to him, and pointing towards Lord Saltire’s house; and the other was black, with its face hid in a hood, who was close beside him, and kept saying in his ear, “Half a million! half a million!”

A strange apparition in Curzon Street, at four o’clock on a January afternoon! Gibbon lays great stress on no contemporary historian having noticed the darkness at the Crucifixion. If you search the files of the papers at this period, you will find no notice of any remarkable atmospheric phenomena in Curzon Street that afternoon. But two angels were there nevertheless, and Lord Ascot had a dim suspicion of it.

A dim suspicion of it! How could it be otherwise, when he heard a voice in one ear repeating Lady Ascot’s last words, “What can save you from the terrible hereafter?” and in the other the stealthy whisper of the fiend, “Half a million! half a million!”

He paused only for a moment, and then headed northward again. The black angel was at his ear, but the white one was close to him — so close, that when his own door opened, the three passed in together. Adelaide, standing under the chandelier in the hall, saw nothing of the two spirits; only her husband, scowling fiercely.

She was going upstairs to dress, but she paused. As soon as Lord Ascot’s “confidential scoundrel,” before mentioned, had left the hall, she came up to him, and in a whisper, for she knew the man was listening, said:

“What is the matter. Welter?”

He looked as if he would have pushed her out of the way. But he did not. He said:— “I have seen Charles Ravenshoe.”

“When?”

“Tonight.”

“Good God! Then it is almost a matter of time itli us,” said Adelaide. “I had a dim suspicion of this. Ascot. It is horrible. We are ruined.”

“Not yet,” said Lord Ascot.

“There is time — time. He is obstinate and mad. Lord Saltire might die — ”

“Well?”

“Either of them,” she hissed out. “Is there no — ”

“No what?”

“There is a half a million of money,” said Adelaide.

“Well?”

“All sorts of things happen to people.”

Lord Ascot looked at her for an instant, and snarled out a curse at her.

John Marston was perfectly right. He was a savage, untameable blackguard. He went upstairs into his bedroom. The two angels were with him. They are with all of us at such times as these. There is no plagiarism here. The fact is too old for that.

Up and down, up and down. The bedroom was not long enough; so he opened the door of the dressing-room; and that was not long enough; and so he opened the door of what had been the nursery in a happier household than his, and walked up and down through them all And Adelaide sat below, before a single candle, with pale face and clenched lips, listening to his footfall on the floor above.

She knew as well as if an angel had told her what was passing in his mind as he walked up and down. She had foreseen this crisis plainly — yon may laugh at me, but she had. She had seen that if, by any wild conjunction of circumstances, Charles Ravenshoe were alive, and if he were to come across him before Lord Saltire’s death, events would arrange themselves exactly as they were doing on this terrible evening. There was something awfully strange in the realization of her morbid suspicions.

Yes, she had seen thus far, and had laughed at herself for entertaining such mad fancies. But she had seen no further. What the upshot would be was hidden from her like a dark veil. Black and impenetrable as the fog which was hanging over Waterloo Bridge at that moment, which made the squalid figure of a young, desperate girl show like a pale, fluttering ghost, leading a man whom we know well, a man who followed her, on the road to — what?

The rest, though, seemed to be, in some sort, in her own hands. “Wealth, position in the world, the power of driving her chariot over the necks of those who had scorned her — the only things for which her worthless heart cared — were all at stake. “He will murder me,” she said, “hut he shall hear 7we.”

Still, up and down, over head, his heavy footfall went to and fro.

Seldom, in any man’s life, comes such a trial as his this night. A good man might have been hard tried in such circumstances. What hope can we have of a desperate blackguard like Lord Ascot? He knew Lord Saltire hated him; he knew that Lord Saltire had only left his property to him because he thought Charles Ravenshoe was dead; and yet he hesitated whether or no he should tell Lord Saltire that he had seen Charles, and ruin himself utterly.

Was he such an utter rascal as John Marston made him outi Would such a rascal have hesitated long? What could make a man without a character, without principle, without a care about the world’s opinion, hesitate at such a time like this? I cannot tell you.

He was not used to think about things logically or calmly; and so, as he paced up and down, it was some time before he actually arranged his thoughts. Then he came to this conclusion, and put it fairly before him — that, if he let Lord Saltire know that Charles Ravenshoe was alive, he was ruined; and that, if he did not, he was a villain.

Let us give the poor profligate wretch credit for getting even so far as this. There was no attempt to gloss over the facts and deceive himself He put the whole matter honestly before him.

He would be a fool if he told Lord Saltire. He would be worse than a fool, a madman — there was no doubt about that. It was not to be thought about.

But Charles Ravenshoe!

How pale the dear old lad looked. What a kind, gentle old face it was. How well he could remember the first time he ever saw him. At Twyford, yes; and, that very same visit, how he ran across the billiard-room, and asked him who Lord Saltire was. Yes. What jolly times there were down in Devonshire, too. Those Claycomb hounds wanted pace, but they were full fast enough for the coun............