Mr. Richard Bannister sat in a hard but comfortable chair while Voss brushed his hair with a pair of exquisite tortoise-shell brushes. He held a letter in his hand which seemed to amuse him. By the reflection in the mirror Voss was able to watch the supercilious curl of his master's thin lip, and the whimsical puckering of the crowsfeet about the eyes.

The valet paused in his labors and peered over his master's shoulder at the letter, a brush poised in each hand waiting for the next stroke and oscillating in mid-air, while he also read from beginning to the end of the epistle. The brushes remained inactive so long that Mr. Bannister became aware of the impertinent scrutiny. Instead of rebuking this man he handed the letter up over his shoulder for the servant's more comfortable perusal.

It was only a formal invitation from Lady Hester Cardew to Mr. Richard Bannister, begging him to come to Ripley, and make the Palace his headquarters for one night. Voss gripped the letter with an inactive finger and held it aloft, brush and all, to get a clear perusal. He smiled thoughtfully as he handed it back, and put extra vigor into the finer manipulation of the glossy hair.

"What do you think of it?" asked the master, with a whimsical smile, surveying his man in the mirror.

"Seems all right," was Voss's comment. Then, after a pause, "Going?"

"Haven't made up my mind."

"It's the right set. Most respectable, and wonderful soft."

"I'm afraid 'soft' society doesn't stimulate me to a properly adventurous spirit, Voss. I get bored and impatient."

"Not impatient," chuckled Voss. "There never was a chap so patient. I thought I knew how to wait; but you, oh, lor'! You make me ache."

"The man who follows a profession at once difficult, artistic, and dangerous, should never rush at anything, Voss. One good coup in three weeks, carried to a successful issue and finished out of hand, without the slightest trail for anxiety left behind, is far better than a dozen rash, hasty ventures and hairbreadth escapes, leaving behind a gnawing consciousness that some false step, some forgotten clue, may bring retribution and disaster. Have you ever had an uneasy conscience, Voss?"

Voss was puzzled. He paused in giving a pleasing twist to the front lock, and gazed into the mirror inquiringly. Seeing there only a quizzical smile, he asked with a grin--

"Who're you getting at?"

"I mean what I say. Have you ever had an uneasy conscience?"

"Maybe--occasional."

"A rare luxury, evidently. Now, I'll warrant that the sensation was entirely due to the dread that some act or avoidable indiscretion might bring trouble in the uncertain future."

"How will that do?" asked Voss, combing the lock uninterested. "Is that front bit too high?"

"Of course it is." Mr. Bannister seized the comb petulantly. "Hair should fall softly, in natural fashion. Only a butcher or a hairdresser likes his hair to resemble oiled wood."

The dandy caressed his beautiful front lock, with the grey strand in the centre, and studied the effect at different angles, like a woman. His soft, slender, white hand rested on the comb in a manner that suggested an acute sensibility of touch, combined with cat-like deliberation of movement. The interest he took in his appearance was keen; but he looked well pleased when he had completed his toilet.

On the table in front of him was a large framed photograph of Mabel, taken by the most expensive photographer in Paris. It was a really charming picture, and his gaze was held by it. Then he sighed and bent nearer the mirror to examine the crowsfeet about his lustrous Italian eyes.

"Of course, you'll go?" queried Voss casually. His mind had been running in the same groove since he last spoke. His master's had floated over the whole range of paternity, youth, love, marriage, old-age, palsied limbs, and chilling death. He wondered if paternity really did bring any compensations in declining years--whether the love of a daughter was more worth winning, and keeping, than the love of a wife or a passionate houri. Voss's query brought him back. He sighed and allowed his servant to help him on with his faultless morning coat, but made no reply.

"Bishop Cardew is one of the Northallerton family," observed Voss; "the chap who used to do the hero in the East End--the one old Judd went to when he took on religion after the drink had done for him. He married a nurse, or a sister of mercy, or something of that sort--a woman with a title. She's his second wife. He's a cousin of the Marquis of Northallerton. I read it in the paper the other day. Caught my eye 'cos it mentioned the Cardew emeralds, which was left away from the marquis's side of the family, and now belong to the Bishop's lady--which is a waste, as she never wears 'em. In the paper it said there was twenty thousand pounds' worth at the Palace from year's end to year's end and never worn, only kept in a glass case. Lord! some people is fools. Emeralds is fetching a bit just now--fetching double, some say."

Mr. Bannister was listening, but he appeared to be taking more interest in the last touches of his toilet. While his back was turned he casually remarked--

"Would you be surprised to hear, Voss, that my silly girl is going to marry the Bishop's son?"

Voss paused in the act of folding his master's dressing-gown and looked up, his face as expressionless as a mask of wax. Then surprise gave place to another emotion, and a curiously foxy and cunning look crept into his eyes. Speech came at last.

"Garn! you're getting at me."

"'Tis true, and funny 'tis, 'tis true. That's why I'm invited to the palace; the palace being, I am given to understand, a large, uncomfortable, dreary mansion, in a sleepy, stupid town."

Voss indulged in a rare luxury; he laughed. He sometimes chuckled, but rarely did mirth commandeer all the muscles of his face.

Bannister flashed round angrily.

"D--n you! what are you laughing at? Do you think my daughter isn't good enough for a jumped-up Bishop's son? Gad, man, is there a girl in the peerage more fitted to wear a coronet, or as well fitted?"

"I ain't got nothing to say against her looks," replied Voss sulkily, as he took up his master's silk hat and brushed it mechanically. "But I thought you was going to turn her into money. If she'd only top the wink to young Blunt and keep him dangling, you could get a clear thousand out of the silly mug."

"A girl in love is not likely to easily lend herself to vulgar intrigue, Voss. You never calculate for the existence of finer feelings. Be careful, that hat had three ugly scratches on the front yesterday. If you can't get them out throw the hat away. There's another waiting in my box at Scott's. Allow me. The brush this way, if you please. Not so rough." He took the hat with a touch that was a caress, and delicately smoothed it, while Voss looked on superciliously.

"I thought you reckoned upon the gal as an investment," observed Voss, when the hat was in proper order and the brush handed back to him; "that you was going to get back all you'd spent on her and more, and she was going to increase your respectability and give you 'tong.'"

"Ton," corrected Bannister, with a twinge. "Voss, you were in Paris long enough to get a better accent than that. And to think that you swindled English hotel keepers as a French count before I took you in hand and made a gentleman's gentleman of you! I can hardly believe it when I hear your accent."

"Broken English is a simple lingo, but to talk French as you do, easy as whistling, requires eddication."

"Ah! that's so. You're in your proper sphere as my valet. But I wish you'd curb your natural vulgarity of idea, and not gurgle at the mention of jewels. To use one of your favorite expressions, 'I am not on that lay now.'"

"Bah!" exclaimed Voss; "clubs and play and city companies and all them things is flnnicking."

"A steady income, Voss, a steady income."

"Yes, and what do you do with it? That's what I can't make out. You must be making a tidy bit."

"You get your share, my good fellow," snapped the master, with unusual acerbity. He only allowed his servant and partner a certain limit of familiarity.

"Oh! I ain't complaining. But you don't spend like you used to, not of late years."

Mr. Bannister poised his silk hat at the proper angle on his head, and intently examined his reflection in the full-length mirror at close quarters and for quite a long time.

"What's the matter?" queried Voss.

"Sir," corrected the other sharply.

"Sir."

"It's the flight of time that is worrying me, Voss," sighed Bannister. "Age is creeping on me. I've no intention of ending my days in discreditable obscurity."

"Why, you're not much over forty yet. That ain't old."

"Have you noticed my recent interest in land agents' catalogues and _County Life_?"

"Yes, I've seen it. I thought you was thinking of crib-cracking?"

"Voss, you shock me; your instincts are so abominably low. I'm thinking of settling down as a country gentleman."

Voss raised his eyebrows. He was past being astonished at anything.

"A new lay," he observed wearily, "and in the country?"

"Not a new 'lay,' as you call it, but a retirement from business. I'm going to buy a nice little place in the country, just large enough for my old age, with a little land and some shooting. By that time I hope to see you, Voss, installed as an honest publican in some thriving inn--near a race course, say--at a convenient distance, a very considerable distance."

He paused in the act of drawing on a glove, and picked up a copy of _County Life_ which lay open on a side table.

"Here's a little place, £7,000. Six miles from Ripley, one mile from church and post."

"And how far from the county jail?" asked Voss, with obvious anger. Evidence of Bannister's affluence always annoyed him. It gave extra strength to the master's whip-hand, for money is power, even against the law, and much more against an humble law-breaker.

"I could buy the place, Voss, but I couldn't keep it up. It looks pretty, and shooting pheasants is, I'm sure, a better game than fleecing pigeons."

Bannister held out his hand for his cane.

"I don't want to meet Miss Mabel this morning. She's looking red-eyed and worried. She saw too much when Blunt was here."

"That was your fault," replied Voss sharply.

"Sir."

"Your fault, sir," corrected Voss, polishing his master's malacca vigorously. "You got into a paddy, and you wouldn't see my signs. I went as close as I dared. Cards is nasty things when women is about. Jewels is better."

"Voss, you're a thief by instinct. I am an artist. I see and understand how easy it is to convey wealth from one owner to another. I use the same ingenuity and thought that financiers apply to the amassing of wealth by so-called honorable means. The jewels of the Bishop's lady, for instance, are no more hers than mine. They are in reality a part of the wealth of a nation--the wealth that ebbs and flows with the tide, and is cast here and there, in large waves and little eddies, ever changing, ever shifting, according to circumstance and the luck of birth, marriage, and death."

"Here, stow it!" growled Voss savagely. He, too, allowed only a certain measure of superiority in his master, as his master allowed only a certain familiarity. "Talk sense. What about the Bishop's emeralds?"

"Twenty thousand pounds did you say they were worth?"

"So the papers said. That was the face value when they last changed hands, twenty years ago. Twenty thousand pounds' worth of emeralds! Lord! it makes your mouth water. They must be worth at least forty thousand now."

"But if the Bishop's son marries my daughter they'll be hers in due course."

"I ain't dealing in futures, or floating in fairy tales," retorted Voss irritably. To him the marriage of Mabel with a Bishop's son savored of rank absurdity; yet it frightened him a little, for he had long ago learned to dread the bold flights which the master mind of Bannister occasionally sprang upon him.

"Well, at least I think I'll go down and visit the Bishop," observed Bannister at length. He surveyed himself again in the full-length mirror with evident satisfaction. "The Bishop's lady is delightful, I am told. Order me the last six numbers of the _Guardian_, the _Churchman_, or any standard religious paper. I must read up my subject."

"You're a fair wonder," murmured Voss, as he rubbed his hands softly.

He saw emeralds in the air, and they meant excitement and change of scene.

* * * * * * *

The same post that brought Mr. Bannister his invitation to the Palace brought Mabel a letter from Lady Hester. The sight of the familiar writing was enough to set the girl palpitating. It brought back her last interview--the pale face, the urgent entreaties, the nervous, hysterical warning, and the amazing confession.

Whatever Lady Hester might say or do in the future, Mabel felt some satisfaction that she at least had been honest and faithful to Jack. She had married him without reserve or deception, believing her father to be an honorable gentleman, and her own life had been blameless; whereas Lady Hester had suppressed the most vital of all facts in entering matrimony--she had been married before, and did not speak.

To a young girl it seemed incredible that any one could be so charming as Lady Hester and at once so foolish and wicked. She gave little thought to the natural shame and despair of a woman of Lady Hester's social position who finds herself allied to a social pariah, a thief, or to the wild cravings for peace when chance freed her and allowed her to go back to her own world, unsmirched in conscience, and safe from the pointing finger of scorn so long as she remained silent. True, Mabel herself had acquiesced in the wilful deception of Lady Hester after having given a promise, but she salved her conscience by regarding that as Jack's affair, and there was nothing for it but to go on with the deception.

It was not the need for hiding her marriage that troubled her so much now as the awful discovery of her father's real character. The horror of it was intensified when viewed in the light of her new relationship to Bishop Cardew, the noble, upright, zealous enthusiast, who loathed shams and every form of wrong, and would cut off his right hand rather than that his son--whom he loved devotedly, in spite of his apparent severity--should ally himself to one likely to bring discredit upon the Bishopric of Ripley, the great position which he held in trust from heaven.

Lady Hester's letter was bulky and long, and Mabel began it with bated breath and considerable trepidation.

"MY DEAREST MABEL,

"I've been thinking about you ever since you left, and oh! you don't know how relieved I was to find that my advice had been taken. It makes me think that the sacrifice I made was not in vain. Mabel, dear, don't think any more about what I told you. I shall tell the Bishop some day, but just now is not the time; he is so overworked, and must not be worried. I know that he will judge me more leniently than I deserve. Oh, Mabel, don't, don't think about it. The dreadful skeleton has lain dormant so many years. This affair of yours has brought it all back. I am working steadily in your favor. The Bishop is really very fond of you, and he misses you. But he thinks that you have not received as much spiritual guidance as a girl should in her early education. Still, he is the last man in the world to raise violent, unreasoning opposition to Jack's marriage with the woman of his choice. But you mustn't deceive him--at least, Jack mustn't. He would never forgive that. He likes to think of his son as the soul of honor, in things both great and small. Jack is no longer a boy, but there is no overlooking the fact that he is dependent upon his father for his income, and you'll ruin him if you allow him to deceive the Bishop. An early, rash, secret marriage could but spoil his career at the Bar, which is only just beginning. Keep a clear conscience, and you'll have the joy of a light heart--a priceless possession, never sufficiently valued until too late.

"I have asked your father to come down, and I leave it to you to manage the rest. I understand from Jack that your father was rather wild in his youth, and that he mixes with a set against whom the Bishop has been preaching very vigorously of late; but both are men of the world, so there ought not to be anxiety about their meeting. Personally, I am looking forward to meeting him. From what you have told me, I'm sure he must be a particularly charming and fascinating man. I confess to a little nervousness, for I'm afraid he will find us dull. I forgot to mention that the Bishop has written to him forbidding any engagement between yourself and Jack, and your father has replied that he, too, would not think of 'sanctioning any such union'--I am quoting his own phrase, dear--unless it seemed advisable after mature deliberation on both sides, and there were proper settlements, and so on. So you see, Jack having no money at all, and not being in the position to make settlements, makes things all the more awkward. Nevertheless, I fancy your father's letter has impressed the Bishop. I am writing all this in the strictest confidence and with the greatest frankness, dear, because I want you to marry Jack. Don't have any doubts on that point. Come down with your father if you wish, but I should advise you to stay away, and Jack too.

"Don't meet Jack in town, there's a good girl. Wait, and let everything be honest and above board. Don't deceive anybody; it doesn't pay in the long run. Convention is a terrible octopus; its claws reach out in every direction.

"By the way, Aunt Caroline is here. You will have heard Jack mention her. She has wormed out all there is to know about you already, and she is very curious about you and your family, and especially about your mother, your upbringing, schooling, and all that sort of thing, you know. She's not really a spiteful person, her intentions are always good; but, like many good people, she arrives at her results by particularly uncomfortable methods. Give your father a hint to secure her good opinion.

"Mabel, it will all come right, dear. Spur Jack on to work. Marriage will be all the sweeter when it comes from the consciousness of having earned the right of independence and love.

"You see I am confident for your future, and I sign myself in anticipation, your loving mother,

"HESTER CARDEW."

Mabel shed a few tears over this letter. It wrung her heart both ways, and, instead of making the way seem easier, only softened the quicksands.