'You don't remember the motor drive?'

'No.'

'Well, you're near Staines, and you'll learn all about thing when you feel a bit better. Try a little more caviar; it's extra fine, straight from a grand-duke friend of mine. You couldn't buy it in a shop.'

'Grand dukes-oh, Lord!' thought Charlie, 'what will she expect?'

She jumped up and went to a curtained door. 'The bathroom's here, dear,' she said; 'you can have it in moment,' and she was gone.

Charlie Osmond finished a glass of champagne, got hastily out of bed, and examined his pockets. One pound, fourteen and seven pence was the net-obviously useless.

He had done this sort of thing before, and subsequently paid, but there was something about this girl that made him uneasy. She was very much out of the ordinary.

He had some more champagne, and listened apprehensively to the splashing in the bathroom.

We have to go through this book with Charlie Osmond, so our readers may just as well know a little about him.

A gentleman by birth, he had most of the right instincts and perversions. He had left Eton for the usual reason, and he regretted it. He did not want to bugger other boys, but some did, and he somehow hated to be out of the fashion. Unfortunately, he was found out.

At Oxford his career had been meteoric. He could not go to a very good college, owing to his school troubles, and his 'good allowance made him a star at-(we will suppress the name). He did many things he should not have done and his final exploit of sowing the word CUNT in mustard and cress in the grass of the front quad, which came up under the astonished eyes of the dean's daughter, led to his final exit. His defence-that he had meant the word as a moral admonition to those of the varsity who had leanings towards malpractices in the sodomitical line-was not accepted, and he went.

The homecoming was as usual-nobody to meet him at the station but the chauffeur, and father in the gunroom.