Lady Caroom, grave and sad-eyed, was listening with an anxiety wholly unconcealed.

Under the shaded lamplight their faces, dominated by that cold masterly figure at the head of the table, were almost Rembrandtesque.
"You have heard a string of incoherent but sufficiently damaging accusations made against me to-day by a young lady whose very existence, I may say, was a surprise to me.

It suited me then to deny them.
Nevertheless they were in the main true." The announcement was no shock.

Every one of the three curiously enough had believed the girl.
"I must go a little further back than the time of which she spoke.

At twenty-six years old I was an idle young man of good family, but scant expectations, supposed to be studying at the Bar, but in reality idling my time about town.