Besides the motherly chaperone, there was another in the party, a gentleman who in physique and handsome features far outshone Roderic.
Of course this was Jerome Wellington, a man of the world, belonging to a good family and now of a mind to settle down after having sown a magnificent crop of wild oats.
Naturally when such a dasher thus resolves to give up his freedom, he looks around for a girl whose income will forever preclude any and all possibility of his ever being compelled to live upon his wits again.
With ten millions more or less at her beck and nod, Miss Fairfax of Virginia offered grand opportunities in this line, and accordingly the Adonis who had seldom known what it was to fail had sworn a mighty oath that ere twelve moons had waxed and waned M'lle Cleo would have changed her name to the equally aristocratic one of Wellington.
Then he struck a snag.
He discovered that Cleo had since childhood cherished a deep and romantic fancy for Roderic Owen.
They had romped together, and as years fled the stalwart young man became her hero. She blindly adored him, and being so frank and open by nature, her secret was easily read by such an acute observer as Jerome, though the object of this affection had somehow never dreamed that he was regarded in any other than a cousinly way.
If Jerome had a strong point of which he was particularly proud it was his connection with divers deep and dark plots. He regarded himself in the light of a modern Machiavelli, and was never really happy unless dabbling in mysterious affairs.
In his day he had been Carlist, Anarchist, Socialist, Nihilist and heaven knows what not.