A lady's man--that is what he is." Victor Durnovo was smarting under a sense of injury which was annoyingly indefinite.

It was true that Jack Meredith had come at a very unpropitious moment; but it was equally clear that the intrusion could only have been the result of accident.

It was really a case of the third person who is no company, with aggravated symptoms.

Durnovo had vaguely felt in the presence of either a subtle possibility of sympathy between Jocelyn Gordon and Jack Meredith.

When he saw them together, for only a few minutes as it happened, the sympathy rose up and buffeted him in the face, and he hated Jack Meredith for it.