LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

[ Luncheon at Grosvenor Square was an exceedingly simple meal . . . Frontispiece ]

[ "Richard Vont was head-keeper at Mandeleys when I succeeded to the title and estates" ]

[ "I expect we are all as bad, though," she went on rather gloomily, "even if we are not quite so blatant" ]

[ "You're very hard, father," she said simply ]

THE WICKED MARQUIS

CHAPTER I

Reginald Philip Graham Thursford, Baron Travers, Marquis of Mandeleys, issued, one May morning, from the gloomy precincts of the Law Courts without haste, yet with certain evidences of a definite desire to leave the place behind him. He crossed first the pavement and then the street, piloted here and there by his somewhat obsequious companion, and turned along the Strand, westwards. Then, in that democratic thoroughfare, for the first time since the calamity had happened, his lips were unlocked in somewhat singular fashion.

"Well, I'm damned!" he exclaimed, with slow and significant emphasis.