The Silver Bag
Author: Cobb, Thomas
Date: 2016-06-02T05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fiction
Description: Ebook prepared by crutledge@knology.net
Rights: Public Domain

TABLE of CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHAPTER XXIX

CHAPTER XXX

CHAPTER XXXI

CHAPTER XXXII

CHAPTER XXXIII

CHAPTER XXXIV

CHAPTER XXXV

CHAPTER XXXVI

CHAPTER I

VALENTINE looked surprised to hear that his friend Derrick Chalmers had not waited to surrender the flat in accordance with his promise, but the hall porter explained, as soon as he had taken the suit-case and kit-bag out of the taxi-cab and handed over the latchkey, that a letter had been left on the sitting-room mantelshelf.

“Then,” asked Valentine, “when did Mr. Chalmers go?”

“On Monday—the day before yesterday,” was the answer.

“At about what time? ”

“It must have been getting on for half-past eight,” the hall porter explained. “I’d been off duty for an hour or two, and Mr. Chalmers, he was just starting off as I got back. There’s been a young lady here.”

“Not to see me?" cried Valentine, with obvious astonishment.

“Well, sir,” was the reply, “she spoke to me on her way out, and said she’d been ringing the bell and couldn’t get an answer. She wanted to know when Mr. Chalmers was likely to be home.”

“When was that? ” demanded Valentine.

“About half-past two yesterday afternoon. But,” the hall porter continued, “though I said Mr. Chalmers had gone away and wasn’t coming back, she was here again by twelve this very morning and asked when you were expected.”

“Did she leave her name? ”

“No, sir, she wouldn’t give no name,” said the hall porter, following Valentine with the suitcase in one hand and the kit-bag in the other to the lift The third floor of the huge block of buildings, known as No. 3 Parliament Court, consisted principally of small bachelor flats, one of which Valentine Brook had occupied during the last twelve months, living quite alone. For his meals he could either go downstairs to the common dining-room or order anything from the menu to be sent up.

On this Wednesday evening, the twenty-second of February, he had just returned from a month’s visit to Paris. Having let himself into his flat and switched on the electric light, he looked round the sitting-room and saw that everything was precisely the same as when he went away, only, perhaps, a little more tidy. Derrick Chalmers had apparently been able to remove all his possessions in spite of what seemed to have been a hasty departure.

Taking a box of matches from the pocket of his Harris tweed overcoat, Valentine stooped to light the gas fire, then opened the envelope which was propped up against the clock on the mantelshelf. He had barely time to finish reading the pencilled letter before the bell rang, and on going to open the outer door he found himself face to face with a rather tall, dark-haired girl who looked about three-and-twenty years of age.

“Good evening,” he exclaimed. “I think you have been here before.”

“I came to see Mr. Chalmers,” she returned.

“Oh well, I’m afraid you can’t do that, you know,” said Valentine. “The fact is he went away the day before yesterday.”

“How surprised you must have been! ” she cried, with a smile. From the outset, she showed no sign of embarrassment on the one hand or of effrontery on the other. Her manner, indeed, struck Valentine as being curiously self-possessed.

“Why, yes, I was,” he admitted. “I expected to find him here this evening. Perhaps you know that I lent him my flat while I was abroad for a month, but he left a letter to say he had received an urgent summons from his mother. She had been suddenly ordered to undergo an operation, and of course he started off at once.”

“You,” she said, “are Mr. Valentine Brook.”

“There,” he suggested, “you have the advantage over me.”

“Everybody knows your name,” she insisted. “Your play is advertised on all the motor-buses and Tubes in London. But mine is really not of the slightest importance.”

“Still,” urged Valentine, “it’s rather convenient to know whom one is talking to."

Standing in the somewhat dim light of the corridor, with an umbrella in one hand, while the other rested on the door frame, she tantalizingly shook her head. It seemed odd that she should refuse to give her name, especially as she knew a good deal about himself as well as Derrick Chalmers. In any case, Valentine came to the conclusion that she was an exceptionally nice-looking girl, quietly dressed, with dark hair and quite embarrassingly expressive eyes.

“It isn’t that I really wanted to see Mr. Chalmers so much,” she said.

“In that case,” exclaimed Valentine, “may I ask why you have taken the trouble to come here three times in two days? ”

“Oh well, I came to fetch something,” she answered, and now he could not help feeling a little suspicious. If she had come to fetch something, surely it was more strange than ever that she should refuse her name! “Nothing of the least importance,” she continued, in a casual tone, which might be assumed. “A wrist-bag—a small, silver wrist-bag. You must surely know the sort of thing.”

“But,” said Valentine, “there can’t be anything of that kind here.”

“Oh dear yes! I’m perfectly certain it’s somewhere here,” she insisted.

“What the dickens could Chalmers have wanted with a silver wrist-bag?” demanded Valentine.

“How stupid! ” she returned impatiently. “If it belonged to Mr. Chalmers naturally I shouldn’t take all this trouble about the thing.”

“Perhaps,” he urged, “you wouldn’t mind telling me how it got here”

“Wouldn’t it be reasonable to suppose that it was brought?” said the visitor.

“By yourself? ” he asked.

“Oh dear no! ” she cried, with her head in the air. “I had never put my foot inside the building till yesterday.”

“Anyhow,” said Valentine, “if it’s here as you say, it must have been left by somebody, you know. Do you mind telling me when? ”

“On Monday afternoon—the day before yesterday. Rather late in the afternoon.”

“In that case it could scarcely have been very long before Chalmers went away,” suggested Valentine.

“Oh dear! ” she exclaimed. “How I wish you would be nice and give me the bag and let me go! ”

“First catch your hare,” he said. “But if you would like to come in and look round for yourself, of course I shall be very pleased.”

She entered the narrow passage, which could scarcely be described as a hall, without the slightest hesitation, whereupon Valentine shut the outer door and led the way to the sitting-room, where she at once began the most businesslike search, examining the leather-topped writing-table which stood between the windows, the sideboard opposite, each of the four easy chairs in turn, the sofa—taking care to look beneath the cushion—and the small cottage piano.

Standing on the hearth-rug, Valentine followed her swift movements with attentive and admiring eyes, coming to the conclusion that he had not done her justice in the dimmer light of the corridor. When she turned to glance in his direction, a little coquettishly perhaps, every now and then, he noticed that she had unusually long black eyelashes, also that there might be the faintest trace of powder on her face. At last, having searched every corner of the sitting-room, she came to a standstill in the middle of it, biting her lower lip in perplexity, while she looked around as if for fresh worlds to conquer.

“Well, now, I suppose you’ll admit,” said Valentine, “that there’s nothing in the least resembling a silver wrist-bag here.”

“Not at all,” she insisted. “I am perfectly certain it’s here.”

“In the face of your extremely thorough search,” he suggested, “it couldn’t surely have been overlooked if it were.”

“Oh well,” she cried, after a momentary hesitation, “I—I suppose this is not your only room.”

“Why, no,” said Valentine, raising a hand to stroke his chin.

“-Perhaps,” she urged, “you wouldn’t mind looking in the other one.”

Turning abruptly towards the door, he went out to the passage, and entered the adjoining room for the first time since his return. No sooner was the light switched on than he saw to his astonishment just such a bag as his visitor had described. It was lying on the shaving-table.

CHAPTER II

THERE was nothing to differentiate the silver bag from scores of others which Valentine had seen in shop windows and women’s hands. It must have been about five inches wide by four in depth, a slight bulginess showing that it was not empty. Taking it in his hand, Valentine puffed out his cheeks as he sat down on the edge of the bed. For a few moments his face wore a reflective expression, but suddenly remembering that he had left his anonymous visitor alone he started to his feet, shaking his head sagely as he returned to the sitting-room.

“Oh, thank you, thank you so much!” she exclaimed, coming to meet him with her hand outstretched.

“Upon my word, you know, I’m not quite certain—” began Valentine, with a good deal of embarrassment.

But she promptly interrupted him.

“Not certain of what? ” she asked, with her hand still held out.

“Really,” he stammered, “I’m most frightfully sorry. I don’t know what I ought to do. I’m afraid I can’t see my way to part with it.”

“What do you mean? ” cried the visitor. “Why in the world shouldn’t you? ”

“You see,” he returned, “I can’t help feeling a kind of responsibility to Chalmers.”

“Oh, what dreadful nonsense! ” she said. “As if Mr. Chalmers would have the remotest objection. Why, it is exactly what he would wish you to do.”

“To give something that was left in his flat to a young lady who refuses to tell me who she is or anything about herself! Upon my word, you know, it’s bound to make one feel a little-—”

“A little what, for goodness’ sake? ”

“Well, a little suspicious, don’t you know.”

“I should like very much to hear,” she retorted, sinking into one of the capacious easy chairs, “what in the world you can suspect me of.”

“One thing is perfectly clear,” said Valentine, facing her on the hearth-rug with the bag hanging from his forefinger, “shortly before Chalmers went away on Monday evening he must have been entertaining a visitor. A woman, who left this confounded thing behind her.”

“In that case,” was the answer, “it surely can’t be inconceivable that she should be anxious to get it back into her own possession again.”

“Why, no, not at all,” Valentine admitted. “But it’s equally conceivable that some one might wish to forestall her. Imagine, for instance,” he continued, “that Chalmers’s guest was a married woman. I imagine that she was shadowed and seen to enter this building with the silver bag in her hand, seen to leave later on without it. If her property were found here, might not the result prove a little inconvenient in certain circumstances? ”

“What a remarkably ingenious theory! ” she cried, with a laugh.

“You could quite easily knock the bottom out of it by giving me your name,” he suggested.

“As you appear to disbelieve everything else I have told you, why should you believe that?” she demanded.

“It might be verified by your address, you know.”

“I think,” she retorted, “you are quite the most suspicious person I have ever had anything to do with. I suppose a fellow-feeling with Mr. Chalmers makes you kind; though you are certainly very unkind to me.”

“Oh, but you mustn’t say that, you know,” he urged. “If you hadn’t refused to account for yourself, I don’t suppose I should have made the least fuss about the thing. I should have given it up without a murmur. As it is, I’m immensely sorry, but—well, I’m afraid I’m not taking any risks.”

“At all events,” she answered, with her eyes on his face, “you can’t possibly refuse to let me open it.” She held out her hand without leaving her chair.

“I don’t think it ought to be touched till Chalmers turns up,” said Valentine.

Rising now, with a slight pout on her lips, she drew so near that her coat touched his own. She was certainly a remarkably attractive girl!

“As if,” she entreated, “there could be the slightest shadow of harm in letting me take something out—something quite without value—while you are looking on.”

“A card-case, for example,” said Valentine, with a smile.

“How do you know it contains one? ” she sharply demanded.

“I don’t know. I simply made a lucky guess,” he admitted.

“Oh, why,” she pleaded, resting a hand on his sleeve, “can’t you be generous? Why can’t you let me have my own way? ”

Naturally, he did not like to be regarded as ungenerous, and, as a matter of fact, he was one of the most open-handed of men, as might have been guessed at a glance. He had a good-natured face, round, with a shortish nose, a widish mouth, frank blue eyes, and fair hair. He was not conspicuously tall or well-built or handsome, being scarcely above the average height, of a slender figure, while nobody would have imagined that he had turned thirty. His rough tweed suit was of a somewhat pronounced pattern, and there seemed to be too many things in the pockets.

Valentine did not wish to be ungenerous, but then on the other hand he might easily get Derrick Chalmers into trouble. Of course if his visitor’s statement were correct, and she merely wished to prevent him from discovering the name of the owner of the silver bag, there could be no harm in letting her have her own way; and, as he remained silent under her appealing eyes for a few moments, Valentine flattered himself that he had hit on a method of putting her to the test.

“Well, now, to all intents and purposes,” he explained, “I am going to let you have your own way. Your object is perfectly plain. What you are anxious about is that I shan’t learn to whom the thing belongs. I’ll tell you what I am going to do. I will put the bag away under lock and key and see that it is not disturbed till Chalmers comes back to London.”

Taking a small bunch of keys from his trousers pocket, and making as much fuss about it as possible, he went down on his knee before the writing-table, unlocking one of the drawers, while the visitor stood gazing over his shoulder.

“What do you say to that? ” he asked, dropping the bag into the drawer.

“Oh well, if only I could feel certain it would not be taken out again,” she murmured.

“You may,” he protested. “I give you my word—”

“I am more trustful than you,” she cried. “I accept it without the slightest reservation.”

“Then you will go away contented after all? ” said Valentine, turning the key and standing upright.

“Oh—contented! ” she answered. “I don't say that Naturally, I should have preferred to get my own way. That goes without saying, doesn’t it? But this is the second best. If no one is really allowed to touch the bag until Mr. Chalmers takes possession of it, that is the important matter. Still,” she added, with a plaintive expression, “I wish you could have made up your mind to trust me.”

Seeing her turn towards the door, he began to congratulate himself on the success of his experiment. If she had come to Parliament Court for any nefarious purpose, to obtain possession of the silver bag, in fact, for Derrick’s undoing, she could scarcely have derived the remotest gratification on seeing it stowed away in the drawer. It really appeared, in spite of her refusal to give her name, as if she had been telling the truth from the beginning, whereas her principal’s desire to remain unknown to a friend of Derrick Chalmers might easily be understood.

“Oh well,” said Valentine, ‘'I think I do trust you, if it isn’t rather cheek to put it in that way.”

“You are going to let me have what I want after all?” she exclaimed, turning by the door and holding out her hand again, as he stooped in front of the writing-table.

“Yes, I am going to let you have what you want after all,” he returned, unlocking the drawer and rising.

“Oh, thank you ever so much ,” she said, as he parted with the bag.

A few moments later he was following her along the passage to the outer door. She showed a radiant face as it was opened, smiling and nodding as he stood on the threshold, looking after her tall, graceful figure as she walked swiftly towards the lift.

Well, he hoped that Derrick would not say he had acted injudiciously, though it must be admitted that the silver bag would have been still in his possession if his mysterious visitor had not been endowed with a pretty face—only very slightly powdered—a pair of unusually expressive eyes with marvellously long black eyelashes, and a delectably curved figure.

CHAPTER III

VALENTINE’S father had been a barrister with an unremunerative practice, a wife for many years an invalid, a daughter, and a son on whom—for no apparent reason at that early age—he founded his highest hopes.

Valentine, predestined to achieve the fame and fortune which his father—owing as every one said to no fault of his own—had missed, was to go on from his public school to one of the universities, and when he failed after several attempts to gain a scholarship, Mr. Brook skimped the other members of the family—including himself, it is true—sent his son to Clare, and died suddenly eighteen months later.

His widow and daughter were compelled to remove into a much smaller house; and to keep even this going it became obviously necessary for Valentine to make some contribution. Coming down from Cambridge at the end of the term, he succeeded, through the influence of an old friend of the family, in obtaining, although he was beyond the usual age—being in fact in his twentieth year—a berth in the City office of the London and Southern Counties Bank. He lived at home with his invalid mother and Sibylla, whom he saw gradually developing into a household drudge, his sole dissipation being an occasional visit to the pit of a theatre.

By and by he began to form the unsociable habit of retiring to his bedroom close under the roof as soon as he returned from the bank, and Sibylla understood that he was writing a play. From first to last he had never attempted to write anything else, but henceforth for several years his efforts were unceasing.

From the time he was twenty-one until his twenty-seventh birthday he always had one or two manuscripts going the rounds of the London managers, some never being heard of again, some returning after many days. But at the end of more than six tentative years, on reaching home one Friday he was met by Sibylla with an open telegram in her hand.

Three years older than himself, Sibylla, without the least pretension to beauty, had a fresh, wholesome face and good blue eyes; she was in fact very much like her brother in appearance, and the two were splendid friends.

“Val,” she exclaimed, before he had crossed the small garden, “it’s from Reginald Anstruther.

He wants you to go to see him to-morrow afternoon.”

An appointment was made for six o’clock, and as soon as Valentine reached Mount Street he saw that the actor-manager meant business. He wanted a play, he could see himself in the principal part, and was prepared to put it into rehearsal at once. When Valentine walked away —on air—it was understood that he should receive a formal contract early the following week, and a cheque for a hundred pounds on account of royalties as soon as it was signed.

He was able to attend the rehearsals only after office hours, and even then felt too bashful to offer many suggestions. By the evening of the dress rehearsal he knew the whole thing so well that it seemed flat, stale and unprofitable.

The first-night audience, however, proved enthusiastic; and, although the newspaper critics expressed themselves somewhat less favourably, Reginald Anstruther insisted that the three-act farce was in for a long run.

A month after its production Valentine earned Sibylla’s serious disapproval for the first time in his life. She even went as far as to ask the old friend who had obtained the berth at the London and Southern Counties Bank for her brother to make an attempt to persuade him not to give it up.

“It seems such a dreadful pity,” she insisted. “The money has been wonderfully useful. I don’t know how I could manage to keep on the house without it, and you know, Val, the play won’t run for ever.”

“No, but I’ve another more than half finished,” he insisted.

Nothing that she or anybody else could say made the slightest difference. Valentine left the City, bought a second-hand writing-table for his bedroom, and before the first play had nearly ceased to run Reginald Anstruther accepted a second.

“Now,” exclaimed Valentine, “for the revolution! We’ll clear out of this house as soon as we can find another.”

“But we have got it for nearly a year longer,” Sibylla expostulated, quite in vain.

A larger and more convenient house in Sycamore Road was taken, some additional furniture was bought, a trained nurse was engaged to be in constant attendance on Mrs. Brook, and Sibylla was set free. Then a severe disappointment fell upon her. Valentine broke the news that he intended to live in bachelor rooms, explaining that the time had come when he wanted to be more in the midst of things, though it is possible that he scarcely knew what he meant.

It was certainly not that he wished to do anything which he felt reluctant for Sibylla to hear; but he experienced a vague desire to launch out without steering for any definite shore. After much looking about, he came to rest on the third floor of No. 3 Parliament Court, though he never omitted to pay two or three visits a week to his mother at Sycamore Road. He became a member of a club in Pall Mall and made a few new friends, but still remained the same good-natured, rather bashful, diffident fellow as before.

Now Sibylla was looking forward to seeing him again after his month’s absence in Paris— his first visit abroad. But by the time he had dined after the departure of his anonymous visitor, it seemed too late to go to St John’s Wood that evening. Having rung Sibylla up on the telephone, he inquired after his mother, and promised she should see him the following morning.

Meanwhile he did not anticipate another encounter with the claimant of the silver bag. For that matter Valentine was not certain that he wished for one. Still, he thought of her several times before he went to bed on Wednesday night, assuring himself that after her experience at the flat she would in all probability take care to give it a wide berth in the future.

The thoroughfare was easily to be avoided unless one wished to enter the block of residential chambers itself, or the government offices over the way. Most people would prefer to take the parallel Thames Embankment But, on setting forth the following Saturday afternoon, Valentine was astonished to see his visitor coming towards him a few yards from the door.

CHAPTER IV

VALENTINE was so deeply astonished that he betrayed a little embarrassment.

It is conceivable that he might have done the same in any case, but as it was he raised his soft felt hat, hesitated to offer his hand until she held out her own, and then for a moment or two stood in the middle of the pavement without being able to think of anything to say.

“I wonder whether you were coming to look me up again? ” he ventured at last.

“Certainly not,” was the prompt reply. “How could such a ridiculous idea enter your head! I assure you that enough is as good as a feast, though if I really had been coming you could scarcely have looked more surprised.”

As she walked on he thought he ought to keep by her side. She was rather more smartly dressed than she had been on Wednesday evening, and her eyes looked even darker in contrast with her faintly powdered face.

“I am simply on my way to the Underground,” she explained, “and I should have given you the cut direct if you had not repented at the eleventh hour on Wednesday. I wonder,” she added, as they crossed the road, “why you changed your mind so suddenly? ”

“Oh well,” answered Valentine, “it was most frightfully difficult to stand out, you know.”

“Was it really? ” she murmured, bringing her eyes to bear on his face as she stopped outside the station.

Men were shouting the contents of the evening papers, and an apparently endless queue of passengers was hastening to the booking-offices.

“You will let me take your ticket?” he suggested, when she offered her hand.

“Thank you,” she returned, with a laugh, “I am not to be caught in that way. I shall get one from the penny-in-the-slot machine.”

“Then you are not going to let me know who you are and where you live? ” said Valentine.

“Oh dear no! ” she cried. “Though what in the world you must think of me is more than I can imagine. Perhaps you haven’t thought of me at all. I feel certain you don’t quite trust me even now. Well,” she continued, with a sigh, “I suppose it’s a case for Faith. Faith in the unseen, you know, for it seems rather unlikely that chance will throw us together again.”

Although Valentine Brook may have been a little shy, he was by no means an incorrigible fool, and as she entered the station he could not help suspecting that he should see her again before very long. On the whole he did not think that “chance ” had very much to do with the recent encounter, which nevertheless, in spite of certain slight misgivings, had caused a little pleasurable excitement After all there was a zest in being pursued by one of the most attractive girls he had ever come into contact with. If she elected to take the matter into her own hands, he was, as he walked away from the station, recklessly prepared to meet her half-way.

He was scarcely surprised to see her again at the same time and place on Wednesday, when he rejoiced to find that he was able to greet her with a little more confidence.

“I say,” he exclaimed, “I hope you’re going a bit farther than the Underground this time, you know.”

“Do you? ” she returned, with a radiant smile. “Well, to tell you the prosaic truth, I was thinking of looking for a place to get some tea.”

“Oh well, you needn’t go very far for that,” he urged, rather astonished at his own boldness. “You see, there’s a room on the ground floor here where we can entertain our friends.”

“Is that quite—quite de rigueur? ” she asked.

“Anyhow,” said Valentine, “my sister has dined there any number of times.”

“If it’s good enough for her I suppose it ought to be good enough for me,” was the answer.

A moment later she was accompanying him through the hall and the swing door beyond, along a corridor to the large room where several groups of people were already seated at separate tables. Valentine found one which overlooked the river disengaged, and sitting there, taking off her gloves, his guest looked about her with obvious satisfaction.

“This sort of thing is quite new to me,” she remarked, when the tea had been brought and she had after a little persuasion consented to pour it out “I am a sort of country mouse, you know,” she added, although she did not thoroughly look the part “I have never even had a meal at a restaurant in my life.”

“I wonder whether you would let me take you? ” asked Valentine, flushing like a bashful schoolboy. “We might go to the Français, or Bernasconi’s.” “Oh, I should positively love it!" she exclaimed, helping herself to an eclair.

“If you could meet me where we met to-day,” he suggested. “Any evening you like to name would do.”

“How tantalizing! ” she answered. “Of course nothing could be more utterly impossible. But I might be able to manage lunch one day. Would Monday do? ”

“At one o’clock,” said Valentine.

“If anything should turn up to prevent me,” she cried, “I will let you know.”

“That would be the most frightful sell,” he remonstrated. “There would be only one compensation.”

“What is that?”

“Anyhow, you would have to sign your letter.”

“Oh dear no, I should do nothing of the kind,” she said, with a laugh. “I should either wire or ring you up.”

A little later she insisted that she must be going, and Valentine was permitted to accompany her as far as the station, where they stood at the entrance for a few moments, while he urged her not to forget the appointment for one o’clock on Monday. It was just as she turned away that Valentine saw Lionel Windermere.

They had been at Rugby together and subsequently at Cambridge, although Lionel, like Derrick Chalmers, also an old schoolfellow, had been in his last year when Valentine was a freshman. While Valentine had seen something of both men during the intervening years, he knew little or nothing of their set, his own pecuniary position until the last twelve or eighteen months having kept him on a different social plane.

Lionel was rather shorter than Valentine and more sturdily built; a handsome man, with a black moustache; well turned-out, distinguished-looking, a member of one of the best-known firms on the Stock Exchange. Previous to Valentine’s departure for Paris, Derrick had hinted at certain rumours, and this afternoon Lionel looked as if he were harassed half out of his life. His face was long and haggard, with dark patches beneath his eyes; he must have lost flesh during the last few months, and his manner betrayed a kind of suppressed irritability.

“Oh, I’m a bit out of sorts,” he admitted in answer to Valentine’s inquiry. “I can’t sleep, can’t eat In fact I got Dr. Bendicott to overhaul me the other day.”

“What you want is a holiday,” answered Valentine. “Is Margaret all right? ”

“She was when I saw her yesterday,” said Lionel a little grudgingly.

Valentine knew that the Windermeres did not hit it off together so well as they might have done.

“How’s the youngster? ” he asked.

“Jolly little beggar,” cried Lionel, with a better satisfied expression. “He only came home the day before yesterday—been staying with his grandmother at Tunbridge Wells. Well,” Lionel added, “who’s the young woman, Val?”

“Just what I should like to know,” was the reply.

“Where did you pick her up?”

“Oh well,” Valentine explained, “it was a bit of an adventure in a way. You know I lent Derrick my flat. A day or so before I got back from Paris he had a wire from Mrs. Chalmers. She was ordered to undergo a serious operation, and off he set at once. It seems that he had been entertaining a visitor—”

“A woman! ” exclaimed Lionel.

“The dickens of it was,” Valentine continued, “that she gave the show away by leaving her bag.”

“So, she had been staying on the premises! ”

“No, no,” said Valentine. “Not a kit-bag or anything of that sort. One of those sort of filigree arrangements—silver, you know. Women use them instead of pockets. She left the thing on my shaving-table, and the girl you saw me saying good-bye to just now came to fetch it.” Lionel Windermere stood a few yards from the entrance to the Underground Station, tugging at his moustache. His face had turned suddenly crimson; his voice shook as he asked the next question.

“You don’t know who she is? ”

“She refused to tell me even her name,” said Valentine. “I hesitated at first about letting her have the bag.”

“Why? ” demanded Lionel sharply.

“Oh well, I didn’t want to run the risk of getting old Derrick into a mess,” was the answer.

Without another word, to Valentine’s astonishment, Lionel turned away, walking rapidly towards Northumberland Avenue.

CHAPTER V

VALENTINE’S plans for the following Monday were not upset either by telegram or telephone, and only a few minutes after the appointed time he saw his guest approaching from the direction of the Underground Station. Her greeting could scarcely have been more cheerful, and it seemed obvious that she had made up her mind to enjoy the expedition. She talked gaily on the way to Bernasconi’s in a taxi-cab; the large dining-hall was almost full, and the string band was playing as they made their way to one of the side-tables.

She looked about her enjoyably while Valentine was giving his orders to the waiter and studying the wine list, her excitement making her more attractive than ever. She grew more talkative as she went on with the meal.

“Now confess,” she said, “that you think I am dreadfully barefaced! I know that very clever men are often simple-minded, but though you look so ingenuous—”

“Do I look ingenuous? ” asked Valentine, who had heard such a remark once or twice before, but had never thoroughly appreciated it.

“Oh dear yes! As if you couldn’t say bo to a goose. Still,” she continued, “you can’t be so innocent as to believe that I really met you by accident on Saturday week—just outside Parliament Court too! You must have suspected that I put myself in your way.”

“Well, you know, that was rather jolly of you if you did,” said Valentine.

“If I hadn’t an axe to grind I should have taken excellent care not to pass your door,” she persisted. “I saw a paragraph about your new play.”

“That was rather premature,” was the answer. “The present one isn’t coming off just yet”

“So much the better,” she exclaimed. “You are not likely to have completed the cast Don’t look too startled,” she added, “but I was bold enough to wonder whether you might possibly find a part—a very, very small one—for me.”

“For you—”

“I have always had an ambition to go on the stage,” she said.

“But have you had any experience?”

“Oh well, only as an amateur, but I am positive I could act”

“Most pretty women are,” answered Valentine.

“You see,” she explained, with a gratified smile, “the first time I came to Parliament Street I really expected to see Mr. Chalmers, but the moment I heard he had gone away and that I should have to meet you whether I liked it or not, I thought I might never have such an opportunity again. That was why I walked past the building twice before I succeeded in meeting you. Even if you couldn’t find me a part in your own play,” she continued, “I thought, perhaps, you might be able to introduce me to some one—”

“Introduce you!” said Valentine. “Try to imagine the situation! I arrange an interview with some actor-manager. The fateful moment arrives. ‘ Mr. Blenkinsopp Jones,’ I begin,

‘ Miss- I’m really immensely sorry, but upon my word I don’t know the young lady’s name! ’ ”

“Don’t you understand,” she murmured, leaning eagerly forward across the table, with a wineglass in her hand, as Valentine lighted a cigarette, “that I shouldn’t mind telling you every single thing about myself, I should be only too pleased, if it were possible without giving some one else away.”

“Are you so well known,” suggested Valentine,

“that your name would at once furnish a clue to—to the some one’s identity? ”

“No, of course not,” she replied a little impatiently. “I am the merest nobody. If you wish to know what it is—”

“Why, naturally! ”

“Oh well, it’s Knowles—Lucilla Knowles,” she said. “I used to live at Brighton. My father was Major Knowles—a gunner. There were just the three of us: my father, my mother and I; and nobody could possibly have been happier till she died four years ago. Then my father seemed to change altogether. He had been immensely fond of her. He was seldom at home after the funeral, and when he was it—it wasn’t very pleasant. When he died also, fifteen months ago, everything had to be sold off. I found myself without a home or anything but a few pounds and a little trumpery jewellery.”

“How old were you then? ” asked Valentine. “Twenty-two,” she answered. “The only person in the world I could turn to was my Aunt Hannah, my father’s sister. She lived near Clapham Common, and we had never seen much of her. She was—oh, so narrow and bigoted and puritanical! But she offered me a home, and what could I do but accept it? She seemed to think I had inherited all my father’s most unfortunate tendencies, and she was always on the look-out to eradicate them. Oh, you can’t imagine the life I led till I was fortunate enough to meet my—my Good Fairy. But then, perhaps, you don’t believe in fairies! ”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said.

“Anyhow, you have only to see mine,” cried Lucilla, with an enthusiasm which made a favourable appeal to him. “But then,” she continued, “if there’s one thing certain in the world, it is that you never will.”

“Don’t you think that’s rather tantalizing? ” he suggested.

“And she looks the part so splendidly,” said Lucilla. “She can’t be more than two or three years older than I, but she’s petite, and altogether lovely and marvelously fair. I would give anything to be fair! I shall never forget the first time I saw her—in the sea, before breakfast. She was a wee bit distressed—”

“I suppose you mean that you saved her life? ” asked Valentine.

“Oh dear no! Nothing nearly so heroic. I have always been the most prosaic, jog-trot sort of person.”

“Now,” he urged, “you would like to alter all that by going on the stage? ”

“I should like such a heap of things," she admitted, with a sigh. “If only you knew, you would think me horridly greedy and envious. But I was telling you about my Good Fairy. Though she wasn’t really quite out of her depth, the sea was strong; she grew breathless and frightened, so that I swam towards her and helped her ashore. She was ridiculously grateful when we met the next morning on the front, and for a fortnight afterwards scarcely a day went by without our speaking, Before she left Brighton she gave me her address in London and asked me to call. I promised that I would,” said Lucilla, “but my father died shortly afterwards, and I hadn’t the heart to go to see anybody.”

“Still, you were obviously destined to meet again,” suggested Valentine.

“To my great good fortune. I felt so utterly wretched at Clapham that I put my name down at a Governess’s Agency in New Bond Street, though goodness only knows what I could have taught.”

“How was it,” asked Valentine, “that you didn’t have a shot at the stage? ”

Lowering her eyes for a moment, she began to trifle with her dessert knife.

“Oh, I don’t know. I suppose the truth was I hadn’t enough courage,” she explained.

“I used to invent all manner of •excuses,” she rather hastily continued, “to get to the Agency, but though I went time after time nothing came of it, and I was beginning to feel thoroughly hopeless when one afternoon as I walked away from the door I saw—”

“Your Good Fairy,” Valentine interrupted. “Was she riding in a coach fashioned out of a pumpkin? ”

“A taxi,” said Lucilla. “I dare say,” she added, “it sounds very idiotic, but anyhow that’s how I have thought of her ever since and how I always shall. She insisted on taking me home with her, though I’m not going to let you know where, and before I left the house she had made me tell her everything. She seemed to understand at once. That is the best of her. She always understands. She offered me exactly what I wanted.”

“But you have been hinting that you longed for something more exciting than a situation as a governess,” answered Valentine.

“Oh, my longings have no limitation,” she murmured. “Yours, of course, are all satisfied! ”

“You think they are? ”

“Haven't you everything in the world a man can desire? ’’ she demanded, with her eyes fixed expressively on his face. “A second successful play; a third to follow it; goodness knows how many companies on tour. You have simply everything.”

“Oh no, not quite everything,” said Valentine quietly.

“What else do you want? ” she whispered.

“Upon my word that’s more than I can tell you,” cried Valentine, with a laugh.

“I suppose,” she returned, “you’re something like a spoiled child. You have so many toys that you don’t know which to play with first.”

“Can’t you imagine,” he suggested, “that there may be times when one feels rather sick of playing? ”

“I never should,” she insisted. “Things seem so abominably unfair. I see heaps of girls of my own age having such a splendid time; and what have I done to be left out? But I wasn’t engaged as a governess,” she explained. “There were no children in the house. She wanted a sort of companion, so she said; but, of course, she only thought of the best way to help me. It was positively absurd—the way she exaggerated my small service in the sea at Brighton.”

“What did your aunt have to say about it? ” asked Valentine.

“You should have seen her face when I told her,” said Lucilla. “I had been away for hours, and she was just telling the Wesleyan minister how anxious she felt about me. Really,” Lucilla continued, “my Aunt Hannah is a very good woman, wonderfully liberal to people a long way off and that sort of thing, but dreadful to live with in the same house. I fancy she regarded me rather in sorrow than in anger. She heaped coals of fire on my head, insisting that I should soon find out my mistake, and that her door would be always open to me.”

“You haven’t found it out yet?” suggested Valentine.

“I’ve had the loveliest time,” was the reply. “I am treated like a guest. I have scarcely anything to do but look after the flowers, change the library books, and dust a few ornaments. I often go to the play, and if only this sort of thing could last for ever I shouldn’t wish for anything better. But, naturally, it can’t,” added Lucilla. “However kind these people may be, I shall be bound to turn out some day.”

“Then there are more Good Fairies than one? ” said Valentine.

“Sooner or later,” she continued, noticing his remark only by a shrug, “I shall have to fend for myself again, and as soon as I knew I should be introducing myself to the author of one of the most popular plays in London I determined not to waste the opportunity. But,” cried Lucilla, “it is time I was getting home again.”

“Without having achieved your object in coming? ” said Valentine.

She looked at him across the table through half-veiled eyes.

“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” she retorted. “I flatter myself I’ve done a little useful spade work this morning, anyhow. Next time I may be more successful—if there ever is a next time.”

“Suppose we arrange it now,” urged Valentine.

“It is a wee bit difficult, you know,” said Lucilla. “I have to make the most barefaced excuses. To-day I was bound to say I was going to Clapham Common, the last place in the world I should ever dream of going to willingly.”

“Of course,” answered Valentine, “you must see that it’s inevitable I should jump to the conclusion that your Good Fairy was the owner of the silver bag! ”

“That will not help you much,” she insisted. “You have no more idea who she is than before. I can assure you that you are never likely to have.”

“Wait till I see Chalmers,” exclaimed Valentine, as she rose from her chair.

A few minutes later Lucilla said good-bye at the entrance to the restaurant, but not before she had promised to meet him again at the same time and place that day week.

CHAPTER VI

ON Wednesday afternoon Valentine was standing by one of the windows of his sitting-room on the third floor of No. 3 Parliament Court, gazing out on the barges drifting down the river on the ebb-tide, when, hearing the bell, he went to the outer door and saw Lionel Windermere, looking more than ever like a man who did not sleep o’ nights.

He was as usual very carefully dressed, wearing a black coat and top hat just as he had come from the City. There was something a little formal and dignified about Lionel Winder-mere, and in this regard he differed from Valentine, who seemed to live and move and have his being in a rough tweed suit, usually of a somewhat pronounced pattern.

“I’ve been going to look you up once or twice since we met the other day,” said Windermere, as soon as they entered the sitting-room.

“Why the dickens didn’t you?” exclaimed Valentine, offering cigars and cigarettes, which were rather peremptorily refused.

“For one reason,” Lionel explained, “I have been bothered out of my life in the City. Besides, to tell the truth, I didn’t want to make too much of a fool of myself.”

“Is that what you’re going to do now?” asked Valentine, with a laugh.

“Heaven only knows! ” was the answer. “That’s the sort of problem I always seem to be trying to solve. Val, old man, there are times when I almost feel it’s all the product of my own morbid imagination; at other times the whole thing’s only too objective.”

“Upon my word, I haven’t the faintest notion what you’re gassing about,” suggested Valentine.

“I think I must be the most miserable beggar on God’s earth,” muttered Lionel, sitting down on the edge of the sofa, leaning forward and burying his fingers in his bushy, black hair. There was not much dignity about him now. “You remember,” he added, suddenly raising his eyes, “ telling me about that girl? ”

“Where on earth does she come in? ” exclaimed Valentine, with a start.

“You said you didn’t know who she was or anything about her! ” Lionel persisted.

“Anyhow, I’ve improved on that to some extent,” was the answer. “At least I’ve discovered her name.”

“What is it? ” asked Lionel eagerly.

“Lucilla Knowles.”

“I’ve never heard it in my life,” murmured Lionel after a short silence.

“How should you? ” said Valentine.

“You told me that she came to fetch a silver bag which some—some woman had left in your flat,” returned Lionel, starting to his feet and pacing restlessly about the small room. His hair was roughened, and his eyelids blinked as if even the dim light this late afternoon were too strong for them. “I can’t get the idea out of my head,” he continued. “I wake thinking of it in the night I lie tossing about for hours. Val, I could swear that Chalmers’s visitor was my wife.”

For the moment Valentine was speechless. He blushed vividly at the accusation. During the last seven or eight years he had seen more of Lionel and Margaret Windermere than of his other early friends, and it seemed deplorable that they should have come to this. He had known her before her marriage when she was living in Constable Street, Mayfair, with her mother. As soon as there was a prospect of her younger daughter’s leaving home, Mrs. Rattray wished to get the house off her hands, and Lionel, eager to do anything to gratify her in those days, had taken over the lease, bringing his bride to live there. It seemed from the outset that they had everything to make them happy, as if they disagreed from sheer “cussedness.” Matters might have grown worse of late in consequence of Lionel's state of health; but, whatever the explanation, Valentine was appalled to hear him speak in this way of his wife.

“I think that’s the maddest suggestion I have ever heard,” he said.

“Perhaps I am going mad,” answered Lionel. “Sometimes I think I must be.”

“What connection can conceivably exist between Margaret and Lucilla Knowles?” demanded Valentine. “You saw the girl without recognising her. You don’t know the name. Besides, what right have you to accuse old Derrick? ”

“Anyhow,” said Lionel, “you know he was pretty far gone on Margaret before we were married.”

“So were any number of men. I was one of them.”

“Oh, you! ” retorted Lionel rather contemptuously. “You were just a kid. You hadn’t a penny to bless yourself with in those days; who could have imagined you were going to set the town laughing! Margaret never cared a dash for you, Val.”

“If she cared for Derrick, why do you imagine she didn’t marry him instead of you? ” demanded Valentine.

“You know the sort of old campaigner Mrs. Rattray was,” said Lionel. “I suppose she backed me for what I was worth.”

“Still, you can’t have the slightest scrap of evidence against Derrick! ”

“He used to come to my place a good deal oftener than I liked,” replied Lionel. “Then he dropped it suddenly. That was about a couple of years ago, and I wondered at the time.”

“Take my tip,” urged Valentine, clapping a friendly hand down on Windermere’s shoulder; “get away for a spell. That will soon set your mind in order.”

Lionel took a few more turns about the room, and Valentine silently began to load his pipe.

“That infernal silver bag,” cried Windermere, stopping abruptly in front of him, “was left here last Monday week. What was the time? ”

“Goodness knows! Derrick went away about half-past eight”

“The hall porter,” suggested Lionel, “might be able to tell us.”

"He can’t tell us anything,” said Valentine. “He had been off duty for the afternoon, and only just come back when Derrick passed through the hall”

Lionel sat down again, keeping his face hidden in his hands and remaining silent so long that Valentine began to wonder whether he intended to refer to the painful subject again.

“Val!” he exclaimed at last “The fact is that Margaret and I had a—a flare-up that Monday afternoon.”

“Oh, my dear fellow! ” muttered Valentine, puffing vigorously at his pipe.

“If I don’t talk to some one I shall lose my senses,” Lionel persisted. “It was a little after five when I got home, with the most maddening attack of neuralgia in my head. Things had been infernally critical in the City for the previous week—oh, we’re pulling through all right,” Lionel continued, “but that Monday—well, I didn’t know what might not be going to happen. Before I had been in the house five minutes, Margaret came to own up about some confounded bills. The people were dunning her, and she wanted a cheque. I admit I lost my temper. I admit I said things no man ought to have said. She took it badly. She flounced out of the room, and a few minutes later I heard the street door slammed.”

“I suppose that brought you to your senses,” said Valentine.

“I realised that I had gone too far,” Lionel confessed. “I knew that no woman in the world could be expected to take what I had said sitting down. I ran upstairs and found the maid. She told me that Margaret had dashed into her bedroom, flung on her hat and coat, and snatched up her bag—her silver bag—and left the house.”

CHAPTER VII

“WHAT about the youngster? ” demanded Valentine.

“If only he had been at home,” said Lionel, “it might have made a difference. He was staying with Mrs. Rattray at Tunbridge Wells. It was,” he continued, “half-past five when Margaret left the house. A quarter of an hour later, rain began to fall in a deluge. I waited and waited till past seven, then I couldn’t stick it any longer. I went to Grosvenor Gardens.”

“To your sister-in-law’s!”

“I hoped that Margaret might have gone to Lydia,” Lionel explained. “But she hadn’t been near. I hurried back to Constable Street. There was no sign of her. I imagined all manner of things. She might put an end to her life! I spent a couple of hours in hell. By a few minutes past eight I was back at Lydia’s. I learnt that Margaret had arrived only two minutes earlier. But she wouldn’t consent to see me. Lydia couldn’t induce her to return home. I was afraid she had done with me for good, and then,” said Lionel, “I thought of Evelyn."

“Who is Evelyn? ” asked Valentine quietly.

“Evelyn Stainer. One of Margaret’s schoolfellows. They had not seen much of one another for some time till she came to live in London. That was two years ago. Her father used to be the Dean of Chesterborough. I wish to goodness more of Margaret’s pals were like her. She had just finished dinner, and of course I had to make a clean breast, though Evelyn’s one of those sympathetic souls who jump to an understanding. She didn’t lose an instant, and slipping a cloak over her frock we were off in a jiffy. She sent me home while she went on to Grosvenor Gardens. I thought I should lose my senses during the next hour or so,” said Lionel, “but at last, when I had almost given up hope, she brought Margaret back. She refused to see me that night, but Evelyn called me over the coals pretty thoroughly, and she said that Margaret had spent the two hours and a half between the time she left Constable Street and her arrival at Grosvenor Gardens wandering about in the rain. According to Evelyn, her first impulse had been to go to the youngster at Tunbridge Wells, and she actually got to the Strand before she changed her mind.”

“Though you entertain such a high opinion of Miss Stainer,” Valentine suggested, “you don’t accept her explanation? ”

“Ah, Val, you know as well as I do,” retorted Lionel, “that the most truthful person in the world feels justified in telling the most damnable lie to save a woman’s reputation. Besides, Evelyn may have believed what she said. Margaret may have taken her in. Anyhow, Charing Cross is not very far from this building.”

“Then you insist that Margaret was lying,” said Valentine..

“The suspicion didn’t occur to me,” was the answer, “till I ran up against you and the young woman outside the Underground Station the other day.”

“I wish to goodness you hadn’t,” cried Valentine. “I wish to goodness I hadn’t been blithering idiot enough to say a word. But how in the world was I to imagine you could ever dream of accusing Margaret?”

“I believe,” said Lionel emphatically, “that she came straight here from Constable Street. What I was contemptible enough to say to her put her beside herself. She ran amuck. She did just the most desperately disastrous thing she could think of in her frenzy.”

“Anyhow,” urged Valentine, “if she came, it’s obvious she didn’t stay. My dear chap, your theory won’t hold water for an instant. You ought to know old Derrick fairly well by this time. You know the headstrong, impetuous fellow he is. You assume that he and Margaret were pretty keen on one another or she would never have come to him, frenzied or not. You may take your oath about one thing,” said Valentine. “If she had come here, thrown herself into Derrick’s arms, he would never have let her go again. He’s not that sort. They would have been off together like a shot. Margaret wouldn’t have returned to Constable Street that night.” “She wouldn’t in any case,” Lionel insisted, “if it hadn’t been for the arrival of Mrs. Chalmers’s telegram. I’ve thought it all out— good heavens! I can’t think of anything else. I can picture them here—Chalmers and Margaret; and I scarcely know how to control myself. I can see them making their plans together—their plans to go away that Monday night; then I seem to hear the ring at the bell. Chalmers goes to the door and sees the boy with the wire. Then he was between the devil and the deep sea. How could he go off with Margaret while his mother was lying between life and death? No man on earth could do it. I can picture everything as plainly as if it were actually taking place before my eyes. There’s only one missing link.”

“What is that? ” demanded Valentine curtly.

“What I have to do before I can take a single step,” answered Lionel, “is to find out something more about your friend Miss Knowles.”

“Not from me,” said Valentine. “I have done my level best to find out where she lives. It was of no earthly use.”

“Still, she told you her name! ”

“Nothing more. She drew the line at that,” was the reply. “She positively refused to give me her address.”

“If only I could establish a connection between her and Margaret,” exclaimed Lionel, “there wouldn’t be a single doubt remaining. I would a thousand times sooner know the worst than live in this infernal suspense. I don’t feel I can live in it much longer.”

“My dear fellow,” urged Valentine, “it’s just a case for bromide of potassium and a few weeks’ holiday. The best thing you can do is to follow Bendicott’s advice and clear out before it’s too late,” he added, wishing to goodness that he could feel a little more of the confidence which he expressed.

Lionel was obviously in an unstable neurotic condition, and it was impossible to tell what he would do next. It seemed unlikely that he would rest without an effort to obtain further information, and it was humiliating for Valentine to realize that he was in a sense the cause of the mischief. If he had never told Lionel how he made Lucilla’s acquaintance, there would have been no suspicions; but, as it was, Valentine felt responsible for the issue, and it was up to him to see that things did not go from bad to worse.

It would be impossible to convince Winder-mere of his wife’s inviolability without proving that some other woman had left the silver bag at Parliament Court. To accomplish this it would be necessary to discover the identity of Lucilla’s principal, who might, however, as Lionel suggested, be in touch with Margaret. In that case there would seem to be a kind of presumptive evidenceof Mrs. Windermere’s guilt; but Valentine hoped for better things.

As Lucilla refused information concerning herself, he began to look forward to a visit from Derrick Chalmers, of whose present address, however, he was ignorant. In former days Valentine had been constantly in and out of Mrs. Chalmers’s house in Upper Brook Street, but a few years ago she had given it up and taken to wandering from one watering-place to another in quest of health. Derrick must obviously be in a position to tell Valentine what he wanted to know, but whether or not he would speak out was another matter.

He came to Parliament Court shortly before noon on the day after Lionel’s accusation of Margaret.

CHAPTER VIII

DERRICK CHALMERS was a man of conspicuous appearance, being about the same age as Lionel Windermere and three or four years older than Valentine. He was well over six feet in height, with noticeably broad shoulders and small hips, an erect carriage, rather demonstrative gestures, and a habit of twirling his prominent, reddish moustache. His free, expansive manner led fresh acquaintances to think what a frank, confiding fellow he was, although they generally discovered a year or two later that they knew no more about him than at first.

For the last eighteen months he had no fixed abode in London, sometimes staying at one of the larger, more modern hotels, sometimes in lodgings in the neighbourhood of Jermyn Street. Happening to meet Valentine a week or ten days before the visit to Paris, and remarking that he was on the look-out for fresh quarters, he had been offered the use of the flat, and promptly accepted.

Derrick had knocked about the world a great deal and published two or three fairly successful books of travel. Moreover, he had sat in the House of Commons during half a session, and would no doubt have been a member at the present time if his constituency had not shown the bad taste to prefer a local magnate. He still lived in hope of a reaction in his favour, and meanwhile he was entering Valentine’s flat, explaining that he really had not two minutes to spare, as indeed it appeared he seldom had.

“But, you see, my dear Val,” he continued, throwing back the lapels of his overcoat and thrusting his hands in his trousers pockets, “I felt bound to come and offer ten thousand apologies for leaving you in the lurch. Only my dear old mater lay betwixt life and death, and what in the world could I do but cut away without losing a second? ”

“I hope she’s better by this time? ” said Valentine.

“Ah, the poor soul, I’m beginning to wonder whether she’ll ever be better in this world,” was the reply.

“Then the operation wasn’t successful? ”

“It was the only way to save her life at the moment,” Derrick explained. “Val! It’s a ghastly business to know that anyone you’re fond of is being hacked about in that manner. She’s in a nursing-home at Eastbourne—can’t bear me out of her sight I feel the most dreadful brute for leaving her alone as I’ve done the last year or so. Anyhow, I’m off again this afternoon, and I’ve come straight here from Victoria.”

“You’re going to stay to lunch?” suggested Valentine.

“Thanks very much, I should like it immensely,” said Derrick, “but to tell you the truth I’ve one or two places I’m bound to go to, though I couldn’t pass through without looking in to thank you for the flat.”

“By the by,” exclaimed Valentine, “you left something behind you, on the shaving-table. A wristbag—a small, silver wristbag.”

“Oh, ah, yes,” said Derrick, with an elaborate twirl of his moustache.

Valentine found himself, for the first time in his life, deliberately keeping his interlocutor under close observation. Derrick did not for an instant pretend to misunderstand the reference. As he was obviously not in the least surprised, it seemed to follow that he must have been in communication with the owner of the bag since he left London.

“Some one came to fetch the thing,” Valentine persisted.

“Yes, yes, my dear Val. That’s quite all right,” returned Derrick, with the air of a man who wished to put the subject on one side and to say no more about it.

“Miss Lucilla Knowles! ” suggested Valentine.

“Suppose we take it as read,” said Derrick. “There’s not the least need to worry yourself.”

Now Valentine hesitated for a moment, doubtful whether to enlighten Derrick concerning Windermere’s suspicions or not. Having already made the mistake of saying too much, however, he determined on the present occasion to keep Margaret’s name out of it. In any case, it appeared probable that Derrick would deny her connection with the affair. If she had never had anything to do with the silver bag, of course he would say so, and if she were its owner he would naturally say precisely the same. Derrick was not the man to kiss and tell.

“I wonder,” said Valentine, adopting different tactics, “whether you would mind giving me Miss Knowles’s address? ”

“Did she refuse it? ” asked Derrick.

“Why, yes—”

“My dear Val,” was the answer, “upon my word that’s not playing the game, you know. Trying to go behind the young woman’s back— what! Not that you’ll find out from me.”

“I warned her I should ask you, you old humbug,” cried Valentine.

“Still,” said Derrick, “you would be guilty of murder just the same, although you warned your victim you meant to do him in.”

" I assure you I’ve not the remotest wish to put Lucilla to death,” returned Val, with a laugh. “I simply want to know where she lives.”

“It’s no good, Val!” exclaimed Derrick. “There’s nothing doing. You may as well ring off. Put the business out of your mind and think no more about it”

This, however, proved a matter of some difficulty, especially as Lionel Windermere seemed to find a morbid satisfaction in looking in at Parliament Court on his way from Threadneedle Street, for the express purpose of discussing his wife. It became more and more evident, indeed, that he would not enjoy anything resembling peace of mind until he learnt how Margaret passed those two hours and a half on the afternoon of Monday, the twentieth of February.

At the appointed time Valentine met Lucilla again outside the entrance of No. 3 Parliament Court, and before she had walked many yards by his side she looked up provocatively into his face.

“Well, have you seen Mr. Chalmers yet? ” she exclaimed.

“I suppose you know very well that he looked me up the other morning,” was the answer.

“Did you succeed in persuading him to tell you where I live? ” she persisted, with a laugh.

“Of course,” said Valentine, “you know that I dismally failed.”

“I hope,” she suggested, rather more anxiously, as they entered a taxi-cab, “that you were not reckless enough to tell him of my indiscretion? ”

“Have you been guilty of one? ” asked Valentine.

“I should like to hear what you call this,” she returned.

Whereupon he assured her that, as far as he was concerned, Derrick had only heard of their first meeting. At luncheon, however, Lucilla made no further reference to Chalmers, nor, a little surprisingly, to her desire to go on the stage. She appeared to think only of the passing moments and to enjoy everything that came in her way: the music of the string band, the sight of the people in the crowded dining-hall, the various dishes and the wine.

“I mean to make the most of this morning,” she remarked presently. “It may be the last, you know. I can't tell when I shall be able to get off again. It’s so frightfully difficult to give anything like a plausible excuse. This is the second Monday I am supposed to be at my aunt’s. If I’m not careful my—my Good Fairy will begin to think I’m pining to go back to Clapham Common, and that would be positively fatal. I could never endure it after the last few months.”

“Do you really mean to insinuate that this is to be our last meeting? ” suggested Valentine.

There was so little regret in his voice that Lucilla lifted her dark eyebrows.

The fact was that Valentine had been calling himself to account. It was impossible to remain blind to the circumstance that she showed a “coming-on disposition,” and while this in itself was flattering, and by no means unpleasant, he could not quite see where it would lead. No man could be much less of a Lothario, and the occasional quickening of his pulses under her influence served to make him careful.

“I don’t believe you would mind very, very much if you never saw me again! ” she murmured, leaning forward across the small table and looking full into his eyes. As he did not answer at once, she continued, “I will tell you what I’ll do. Suppose we leave it an open question, and I will see how the cat jumps. I might ring you up from some call-office. Will you be at home to-morrow afternoon—half-past three, say?”

In the face of this he could not very well go out, and, the next afternoon, a few minutes after the appointed time, he heard the telephone bell. Lucilla explained that she was speaking from one of the boxes at Victoria Station, but she could not see her way to make an appointment to meet him.

“To tell you the truth,” she said, “I’ve a sort of uncomfortable feeling that my excuses didn’t sound quite convincing. A guilty conscience, perhaps! I’ll ring up again at the same time on Thursday.”

It was on Thursday morning, however, that Valentine received the letter from Mrs. Tempest.

CHAPTER IX

“MRS. TEMPEST presents her compliments to Mr. Valentine Brook, and would be pleased if he could make it convenient to call at 3 o’clock on Monday afternoon. If this time should not suit Mr Brook, Mrs. Tempest would be much obliged by his making some other appointment.”

The few lines were written in a rather old-fashioned, waving hand, on a correspondence card, which Valentine stuck in the frame of the looking-glass with one or two bills and other pieces of paper. He did not know the woman from Eve, nor had he the slightest inclination either to accept her invitation for Monday afternoon or to make another appointment.

His sudden success might, perhaps, excuse a slight tendency to swelled head, though nobody could really accuse him of taking himself or his plays much too seriously. But he had been freely photographed and paragraphed during the last twelve or fifteen months, and one or two enterprising hostesses had sought him out Mrs. Tempest’s was by no means the first invitation which he had received from unknown members of her sex.

Although he stayed indoors till four o’clock on Thursday afternoon, the telephone bell did not ring, nor was there any word from Lucilla on Friday, when, however, Lionel Windermere looked in on his way home to Constable Street.

“I wish to goodness,” he exclaimed, pacing the sitting-room excitedly, “I could do one thing or the other. I wish I could prove either that Margaret was here with Chalmers or that she was not This infernal suspense will be the death of me.”

Coming to a standstill before the gas fire, he rested his elbows on the mantelshelf, burying his fingers in his black hair. For some seconds he was silent then raising his eyes suddenly, he continued:

“If only I could find out more about that young woman of yours, whatever her name is—”

“Lucilla Knowles! ”

“My memory’s dreadful,” said Lionel. “Hullo! ” he cried, taking a step backwards. “What in the world is this? ”

“What’s what? ” asked Valentine.

“This card,” Lionel continued. “Sorry, Val!

I couldn’t help seeing the name and address— Mrs. Tempest, 7 Champion Place.”

“One of the tribe of Mrs. Leo Hunter,” said Valentine, with a rather self-satisfied laugh.

“Not she! ” Lionel insisted. “Val, old fellow, for Heaven’s sake tell me what she has to say for herself. What on earth is she writing to you about?”

Taking the card, Valentine handed it to Lionel, who for a few moments stood staring at it in silence, as if he were learning the words by rote.

“This settles it! ” he exclaimed at last “I’ve done my best to keep my suspicions under, but this must be enough to convince even you.”

“To convince me of what?” demanded Valentine.

“A thousand to one,” Lionel retorted, “that Mrs. Tempest wants to see you about what took place here that wretched Monday evening.”

“My dear chap, how you twist and turn everything about,” said Valentine. “What connection can there possibly be between the writer of this note and your obsession? ”

“I told you,” cried Lionel in a state of extreme agitation, “that Evelyn Stainer was one of Margaret’s schoolfellows. It was she who persuaded my wife to return to me.”

“Where in the world does Evelyn Stainer come in?” asked Valentine. “What has she to do with Mrs. Tempest?”

“Anyhow,” muttered Lionel, “she lives in the same house. You can’t get over that.”

“Oh, good Lord! ” said Valentine, and during the next few minutes he felt almost as suspicious as Windermere himself. It must be admitted that things were beginning to look black against Margaret He could no longer feel perfectly satisfied that Evelyn Stainer’s housemate had sent an invitation without some definite purpose behind it.

“Perhaps,” he suggested, “you’ll tell me who Mrs. Tempest is.”

“For that matter,” was the reply, “she’s one of the very nicest women I know, though it’s true I don’t know her particularly well. I told you that Evelyn’s father was the Dean of Chester-borough. He left her a good deal of money, and a year after his death Mrs. Stainer married again. Evelyn couldn’t hit it off with Canon Holmes, her stepfather, and when Mrs. Tempest lost her little girl a couple of years ago she made an arrangement to share the house in Champion Place.”

“How about Tempest?” asked Valentine.

“A rotten bad egg,” said Lionel “Mrs.

Tempest allows him so much a year to keep away. It’s one of life’s little ironies,” Lionel continued, “that such a woman should be living apart from her husband.”

“Couldn’t she divorce him? ” suggested Valentine.

“Oh well, she has some sort of religious scruples,” Lionel explained. “A rather old-fashioned type, although she doesn’t look it She’s devilish particular about appearances and conventions and that sort of thing. The kind of woman a man might like to choose for his mother or sister.”

“Not for his wife? ”

“A bit too cold, perhaps,” said Lionel, beginning to walk excitedly about the room again. “ Why in the world should she send for you,” he demanded, “unless she means to say something about the silver bag? You’ll see! She will warn you to keep me in the dark.”

“I wish to goodness I had,” murmured Valentine.

“One thing’s pretty certain! ” exclaimed Lionel.

“What’s that?”

“She knows your friend — Miss Knowles,” Lionel insisted.

“Not a bit of it,” was the answer. “Lucilla has persistently refused her address. She must have acted under orders. Yet you suggest that her principal is going gratuitously to give away the show.”

“Well, I hope you’re right,” said Lionel. “But I can’t get rid of a feeling that things are coming to a head. Val, I shan’t have a moment’s peace till I hear how you get along.”

“If you can look me up after dinner on Monday,” cried Valentine, “I shall be able to tell you.”

CHAPTER X

VALENTINE no longer felt the slightest doubt about the acceptance of Mrs. Tempest’s invitation. It appeared extremely probable, on reflection, that it had some connection with the silver bag, which in that event must belong, he was afraid, to Margaret Windermere.

Lionel’s intermediary had been Evelyn Stainer, who had succeeded in persuading Margaret to return to her husband’s house. The question for Valentine was this: Could it be possible that Evelyn Stainer, also, was Lucilla’s Good Fairy?

There was, he perceived, not a particle of evidence that Lucilla had ever seen either Mrs. Tempest or Miss Stainer, or that she had ever entered Champion Place. Still, the fact remained that Evelyn had been in close contact with Margaret Windermere that Monday evening.

If Margaret had, indeed, been reckless enough in her desperation to go to Parliament Court, and in the excitement of the arrival of Mrs. Chalmers’s telegram and the consequent thwarting of her designs had forgotten the silver bag, what could be more probable than an appeal to Evelyn to recover it?

Evelyn’s housemate had now made an appointment with Valentine, who had handed the bag to Lucilla; and if it should turn out, as Lionel insisted, that Miss Knowles actually lived in Champion Place, well, then, it appeared that Valentine was asked to go to the house to receive some kind of explanation. For why, otherwise, should Mrs. Tempest, acting presumably for Miss Stainer, desire to see him?

In any case Valentine, thinking the matter over once more on Sunday evening, came to the conclusion that his own course was perfectly clear. It was a little after half-past six; a balmy evening for the month of March. He had brought a chair close to the window and lighted a pipe. Leaning back, with his legs comfortably crossed, he told himself that, whether the anticipated explanation were forthcoming or not, his first duty was to seize any opportunity to discover the degree of Margaret Windermere’s complicity.

Whether she deserved condemnation or not, no attempt must be spared to allay Lionel’s suspicions. If it could be proved that she had never entered Parliament Court, so much the better, but, if on the other hand there were reason to believe she had gone to Derrick, even then Valentine’s intention was to do his best to throw dust in her husband’s eyes.

The first thing, however, was to see what happened at Champion Place; and then Valentine, smoking by the window which overlooked the river, while the church bells were ringing for the evening service, began to wonder whether there could be any connection between Mrs. Tempest’s letter and Lucilla’s failure to ring him up as she promised.

Lucilla had intended to make another appointment for him to take her out to luncheon, and it was difficult to believe that she had allowed any trivial difficulty to interfere with her plans. Just as the bells ceased to ring, and one or two clocks were striking seven, some one came to the door.

“That’s old Lionel! ” murmured Valentine as he rose from his chair, but a minute later he stood face to face with Lucilla.

For the first time in his experience she showed signs of embarrassment Hitherto he had always been struck by her almost provocative air of self-possession, but this evening she held out her hand in silence, and he saw that she was carrying a small Prayer Book.

“I have really no business to be here,” she said, looking up rather pitifully into his face, as they stood on the hearth-rug. “I scarcely know why I have come. I am supposed to be at church.”

“You didn’t ring me up as you suggested,” answered Valentine.

“I—I was seen at Bemasconi’s the last time! ” she exclaimed.

“I hope to goodness you haven’t been getting into trouble,” he said.

“Oh well, it was all rather horrid,” she admitted. “Naturally one’s sorry to be found out.”

He was alarmed to see that her lower lip was trembling like that of a child on the verge of tears. Good Lord! She was on the verge of tears, though he could not imagine the reason. Raising her gloved hands, Lucilla covered her face, and Valentine had never felt quite so helpless in his life.

“Oh, I say, you mustn’t fret, you know," he urged, standing close to her side.

“I know I’m dreadfully stupid,” she murmured, “but I—I can’t help it”

“You must try to buck up a bit,” he persisted, and as if to lend force to his words Valentine, feeling very sympathetic at the moment, rested a hand on her shoulder.

Holding her head on one side, she caused her cheek to touch his fingers, and, a little later, by a gradual process which he never precisely under-, stood, it rested on his shoulder, her eyes, uncovered now, being fixed languishingly on his own, and her lips temptingly close.

There are situations in which no man can place himself with impunity, there are temptations which it appears almost feeble to resist. The only judicious plan is to keep away from them. In short, Valentine Brook accepted the conditions not of his own seeking. He kissed Lucilla’s lips. The result proved immediately curative. She dried her eyes. She took off her gloves, and standing before the looking-glass began to straighten her hat.

As Valentine watched her, he was already experiencing regret His mood changed with the cessation of Lucilla’s tears, and he addressed her in a quite business-like tone:

“Won’t you sit down and tell me why you came here instead of going to church? ”

“I have told you,” she answered, a little reproachfully. “We were seen together at the restaurant last Monday.”

“By Mrs. Tempest?” he asked, drawing his bow at a venture.

“Then she actually did write to you! ” exclaimed Lucilla. “I wondered whether it was only a threat”

“I’m immensely sorry she spotted us, anyhow,” said Valentine, feeling terribly afraid now that Lionel’s suspicions would prove to be justified.

“She didn’t,” was the reply.

“Was it Miss Stainer by any chance?” Valentine persisted.

Lucilla looked thoroughly astonished this time.

“Surely,” she said, “Mrs. Tempest didn’t mention her name.”

“Why, no,” Valentine admitted.

“Then how did you hear it? ”

“When I received a letter from an unknown correspondent,” he explained, “I naturally wanted to find out who she was and all about her. I made inquiries, and the result was I learnt that Miss Stainer lived at 7 Champion Place.”

“How did you know,” asked Lucilla, “that Mrs. Tempest’s letter had anything to do with me?”

“To tell the truth, I didn’t,” said Valentine. “I made a chance shot, though of course I put this and that together. She wants me to go and see her at half-past three to-morrow afternoon.”

“Are you—are you going?” cried Lucilla, leaning eagerly forward in her chair.

“It seems the civil thing to do.”

“Oh yes, I think it does,” she answered.

" You will not attempt to deny,” he said, “that Miss Stainer is your Good Fairy? ”

“What would be the use!” she exclaimed “But I never dreamed you would see her. There’s a Mrs. Fairford,” Lucilla continued, “a friend of hers, who lives somewhere at St. John’s Wood She recognised me at lunch last Monday, and while I was telephoning to you from Victoria on Wednesday, she came to Champion Place and told Miss Stainer. You were recognised too. The penalty of fame, you know! As soon as I got home, Miss Stainer tackled me, and I had a rather bad quarter of an hour, because I had said I went to see Aunt Hannah.”

“What did Miss Stainer say?” asked Valentine.

Lucilla paused for a moment. He fancied she was eyeing him askance.

“Oh well, she insisted that a girl in my position was very foolish to have anything to do with a man in yours,” said Lucilla. “She wanted me to promise never to speak to you again.”

After all, especially in the face of the recent emotional experience, this might be the wisest denouement. Valentine dreaded anything of the nature of an anti-climax, whereas he felt incapable of remaining at the altitude which, it seemed, he had reached a few minutes ago.

“I suppose there’s no help for it,” he answered. “One must bow to the inevitable.”

“I hate to jump to conclusions,” said Lucilla. “I didn’t feel certain it was inevitable.”

“Do you mean that you refused to commit yourself? ” asked Valentine.

Lucilla slowly nodded her head.

“So she said she should appeal to you.”

“Oh, Lord! ” cried Valentine. “But I thought,” he added, “that Miss Stainer was anxious above everything that I should not discover her identity? ”

“Not above everything—”

“I’m beginning to feel rather bewildered, you know,” said Valentine.

“I am fated to show myself to you in an odious light,” exclaimed Lucilla. “It is quite true she hated your knowing that she had anything to do with me.”

“Then why in the world have I been asked to go to the house? ”

“Oh, it is impossible to explain,” murmured Lucilla, lowering her eyes, only to raise them again very expressively to his the next instant.

“I suppose,” suggested Valentine, “she felt so anxious to prevent me from meeting you in the future, that she put aside her own feelings and asked Mrs. Tempest to write?”

“Of course,” said Lucilla, holding herself erect and looking prettily dignified, “you are a man! You are a free agent; you can do as you please. You are not obliged to come.”

“For the doubtful satisfaction of being warned off,” he returned, with a laugh. “Anyhow,” he continued, “I shall certainly put in an appearance, if only in the hope of hearing something about the silver bag.”

“There’s not the slightest chance of that,” Lucilla insisted, with a pout.

But he would scarcely have kept to his intention of accepting the invitation unless, in spite of her assertion, he had believed there might be a possibility of learning more about Margaret Windermere.

Although Lucilla was the ostensible cause of the summons, it still appeared possible that the other matter—which had first brought her within his ken—might be touched upon during his visit, especially as Mrs. Tempest and Miss Stainer must know that he was an old friend of Derrick’s.

“I suppose,” said Valentine, when Lucilla rose presently to go away, “it’s not very likely I shall see you to-morrow.”

“Oh dear no. I shall be sent out of the way,” she answered. “Perhaps,” she added, with a quite pathetic break in her voice, “you will never —never see me again. It depends entirely on yourself.”

“We shall see what turns up,” answered Valentine in a non-committal tone. For, since he was obviously going to be brought to book, if Mrs. Tempest attempted to put him on his honour, insisting that he should leave Lucilla alone in the future, he had no mind to oppose her wishes. Probably it would be better for Lucilla as well as for himself. Still, he found it necessary to exercise considerable self-restraint when she held out her hand, standing so close that her coat touched his own, and looking up reproachfully into his eyes as he turned away abruptly to open the door.

CHAPTER XI

VALENTINE was surprised on Monday afternoon to see that Mrs. Tempest looked quite young. She must be a year or two younger than himself, “he thought; she could not be more than seven or eight and twenty. Her hair was as black as Lionel Windermere’s, her complexion rather pale; and, while her dark dress was unrelieved by any scrap of colour, he scarcely knew whether she was supposed to be in mourning or not Slightly above the average height, she had a slender, long-waisted figure, the impression she created being so serenely harmonious that at first Valentine did less than justice to her quiet, unostentatious beauty.

When the solemn butler announced him, she rose, offering her hand, setting him almost at ease even before she spoke. He had reached Champion Place in a condition of uncomfortable embarrassment, but though she came to the point at once, her manner was entirely free from abruptness.

“I am not going to offer any apology,” she began in a low, well-modulated, and altogether agreeable voice. “I am old-fashioned enough to feel a responsibility for every member of my household, and I really couldn’t allow Lucilla to go along as she obviously has been doing. I don’t know what she may have told you about herself—”

“Oh well, she has said a great deal about your kindness to her,” said Valentine.

“Not mine,” was the answer. “I have done nothing. It was Evelyn—Miss Stainer. I suppose,” she continued, with a half-humorous lift of the eyebrows, “you are what they call a man of the world.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Valentine, feeling she did not intend to pay him precisely a compliment.

“But Lucilla is an inexperienced girl. Yes,” Mrs. Tempest insisted, as he began to stroke his chin, “an inexperienced girl who fancies she has nothing left to learn. You must admit that these clandestine meetings show a lack of discretion—a lack of dignity.”

“You seem to insinuate,” suggested Valentine, with a return of his earlier embarrassment, “ that I have been taking something like an undue advantage—”

“I believe you have a sister, Mr. Brook! I wonder whether you would like to know she was in the habit of going about in the same way with a man who was practically a stranger. Why do you look amused? ” she demanded abruptly.

“Oh well, if you knew Sibylla,” he exclaimed.

“Your attentions may be quite innocent and yet dangerous,” said Mrs. Tempest.

“Doesn’t that sound rather paradoxical?” he asked.

“Not in the least You are a well-known man. She is naturally flattered by your notice, and very likely imagines it is due to some especial attractiveness of her own. At her age it’s difficult to realize the predatory nature of the male! While you amuse yourself, she might become seriously involved. I don’t wish to labour the point. I am merely going to ask you to promise not to meet Lucilla outside this house in future.”

Valentine was prepared to satisfy Mrs. Tempest at once, but before there was time to reply she continued:

“On the other hand, you may see her here as often as you please. There is not the least objection to that.”

He remained silent for a few moments, considerably taken aback.

“It’s immensely kind of you—” he began.

But she hastily interrupted him.

“So you decline with thanks! ” she retorted in a rather less agreeable tone. "You shrink from coming out into the light! You are afraid to commit yourself! Of course,” she added, “I see that I may appear to be trying to inveigle you—”

"No, no, of course not,” he protested. "I shouldn’t think tha{ for an instant, you know.”

As he ceased speaking the door opened, and glancing over his shoulder he dreaded lest he should see Lucilla in person; at the moment when he was trying to summon all his courage to confess that he wished never to see her again. But, instead of Miss Knowles, his eyes rested on the Good Fairy. The description was really too apposite to leave any loop-hole for a mistake.

No one could more delectably look the part. Rather short, without being by any means diminutive, her figure precisely suited her stature. She ought not to have been in the slightest degree stouter or more slender; she ought, in fact, in Valentine's opinion, to be in every respect just what she was. He could not suggest an improvement He had never beheld any other woman to be compared with her, while her brilliant vivacity could scarcely have found a more perfect foil than Henrietta Tempest’s serenity.

Although her small features were delicately moulded, perhaps her chief glory was her colouring: the old-gold of her hair; the turquoise-blue of her eyes; the carmine of her lips! Her freshness, Valentine enthusiastically told himself, was of the country, her frock of the town. No doubt her appearance on the scene had been carefully stage-managed. While she had beguiled Henrietta into an interview which a younger, unmarried woman might find more embarrassing, she had still enough curiosity to desire to see Lucilla’s admirer before he left the house.

“Mr. Valentine Brook—Miss Stainer,” said Henrietta.

Evelyn nodded a little distantly.

“Of course,” she exclaimed, “you are a friend of Derrick’s! ”

It was a satisfaction to Valentine to be put on this footing, rather than to be regarded as a friend of Lucilla’s.

“Why, yes,” he answered. “I’ve known Derrick for years. We were at Rugby together. I’m afraid he’s immensely anxious about Mrs. Chalmers.”

“When you came in,” said Henrietta, who seemed to show a desire to keep to the point, “I was telling Mr. Brook that we should always be pleased to see him.”

“You will generally find one of us at home between four and half-past,” suggested Evelyn, with scrutinizing eyes on his face.

“Thank you very much indeed,” murmured Valentine.

“Oh, but Mr. Brook has not the least intention to try,” said Henrietta.

He was almost overwhelmed by the perplexity of the situation.

During the awkward silence which followed Mrs. Tempest’s remark, he saw Evelyn’s short upper lip grow shorter as if with uncontrollable contempt He understood that she would contemn him if he were to play short at this critical moment. These two women were obviously putting him to the test. If he refused their invitation, they would assume that he had nourished the worst intentions regarding Lucilla, and certainly there would not be the remotest prospect of meeting Evelyn again.

It seemed, indeed, that he stood little chance of meeting her in the future unless he allowed her to believe that he meant to come to the house after Lucilla, with whom his relationship would become a little difficult after what passed on Sunday evening at Parliament Court. One desire, however, overcame every other. He was being pressed for a prompt decision, and it amounted to this: Was he to make certain of seeing Evelyn again, or not?

It is true there still remained the desirability of investigating the matter of the silver bag, in the hope of proving that Margaret Windermere had no connection with it But since his eyes first rested on Evelyn a few minutes ago, that seemed to have become a side issue, of slight importance compared with the Good Fairy herself.

At all costs he must secure opportunities of seeing her as often as possible, and every difficulty, every incongruity, must be left for subsequent treatment. Still, Valentine was not for an instant blind to the circumstance that his path would be strewn with obstacles.

“Oh, but indeed,” he exclaimed, “that is an immense mistake! I shall be delighted to be permitted to come. Nothing in the world would give me greater pleasure! ”

As Henrietta shrugged her shoulders, Evelyn held forth her hand with a smile of approval, suggesting that she was sealing a contract rather than bidding him farewell. Her contemptuous expression gave place to one of warm approval, but as Valentine left the house a few minutes later he warned himself that he had put his foot into it. Still he had achieved what had suddenly become his principal object in life: he would be able to see Evelyn again a few days hence.

He walked back to Parliament Court feeling as if he had discovered the elixir of life. The world had become a different place since he set forth an hour or so earlier. On entering the building he was brought back to reality by the sight of Windermere’s haggard face. Lionel was walking restlessly about the hall.

“I know you said I was to come after dinner,” he exclaimed. “But it was no good. I couldn’t wait. Val, old man, for Heaven’s sake tell me the truth and get it over; tell me whether that girl has anything to do with Evelyn Stainer.”

CHAPTER XII

“NOT another word! ” cried Lionel.

“She lives there! That’s enough ^ for me—more than enough. Even you can’t help admitting it must have been Evelyn who sent Miss Knowles to fetch the bag; it must have been either Evelyn or Mrs. Tempest, anyhow.”

He stood on the hearth-rug with his back to the unlighted gas fire, and he still wore his hat. His face twitched spasmodically, nor did Valentine know how to allay his excitement.

“Yes,” he felt constrained to confess. “I suppose it must have been one of the two.”

“Let me put it to you, Val,” exclaimed Lionel. “Does Henrietta Tempest strike you as the kind of woman to have had the opportunity of leaving the infernal thing on—on Chalmers’s shaving-table?”

“I should say she’s the last person in the world,” was the answer.

“With the exception of Evelyn Stainer,”

Lionel persisted. “No man living could imagine her in that galley.”

“Nor Margaret," said Valentine significantly.

“I grant you that,” returned Lionel. “In cold blood she could never have done such a thing. But she was off her head that afternoon. Don’t make any mistake,” he continued. “I admit that I was to blame for that. Still, the fact remains. Of course, I know you’re trying to put me off, but the whole thing’s as clear as daylight Margaret left home with the intention never to come back. She knew Chalmers was staying here. She didn’t hesitate for an instant If it had not been for his mother’s telegram they would have been off together; but in the face of that he couldn’t refuse to go to Mrs. Chalmers, and Margaret, left in the lurch, turned to her sister. After Evelyn had prevailed upon her to return to Constable Street, either the same night or the next morning she missed her bag.”

“There’s one thing you’re forgetting,” suggested Valentine.

“What’s that? ” demanded Lionel.

“When Lucilla Knowles came here on Tuesday morning,” was the answer, “she expected to find Derrick. I had that from her own lips. But, if he and Margaret were prevented from going away together by the telegram, it must have arrived while she was here. She must have known of his intention to leave London that evening, and Lucilla would have been told.”

“Of course she knew,” Lionel insisted. “She knew, too, that you would soon be coming back to take possession—you, a friend of mine. You might open the bag to discover the owner, and spot Margaret’s card-case. Then the fat would have been in the fire. You must be kept in ignorance at all costs. Miss Knowles asked for Chalmers simply to avert suspicion. The whole thing is plain enough, and, for all I can tell, those two may be just marking time till Mrs. Chalmers is well enough to be left. But, by Heaven,” cried Lionel, “I’ll be even with him.”

“You are never going to accuse your wife?” urged Valentine.

“No, I’m not,” said Lionel emphatically. “It’s the devil of a life I’m leading, Val.”

“You don’t imagine she has any notion that you suspect her? ”

“I would stake my life she hasn’t She’s living in a fool’s paradise. I’ve taken good care not to show a sign till the time’s ripe. Besides,” Lionel added, with a groan, “anyone might suppose she was going out of her way to make things a bit pleasanter.”

“Well, perhaps she is,” suggested Valentine.

“Ah, but why?” cried Lionel. “Just as a blind! Just to tide things over! But I’m keeping my eyes open. I’m only waiting till I see my way to bring the thing home. But there,” he added, “what’s the use of talking? You haven’t told me why Mrs. Tempest sent for you.”

“That was something altogether different,” said Valentine. “She discovered that I had taken Lucilla out to lunch once or twice.”

“She’s the sort of woman to disapprove of that,” was the answer.

“Yes. She was anxious to tell me so.”

“So your friend Miss Knowles is to be left in the cart,” said Lionel. “You didn’t see Evelyn—”

“She came in just before I left,” returned Valentine, realising the inadequacy of the description of the epoch-marking event which had actually taken place in Mrs. Tempest’s drawingroom.

“You won’t be able to go again,” suggested Lionel. “That’s a pity. You might have picked up some useful information.”

“Hang the information! ” exclaimed Valentine. “Though, for that matter, I can go as often as I like. Mrs. Tempest gave me a sort of general invitation.”

“If you’re not careful,” said Lionel, “you’ll be letting yourself in for a nice thing. You say that Miss Knowles is a protégée of Evelyn's! What could be better than to marry her to one of our most popular dramatists! When Evelyn Stainer once takes a thing in hand, you may trust her not to let it go again in a hurry. Anyhow,” he added, “it’s an ill wind that blows no one any good. For goodness’ sake keep your eyes open.”

CHAPTER XIII

EVELYN STAINER held out her hand without rising. She had sunk down in the middle of the enormous cushion which answered the purpose of a settee, so that to rise without assistance would have been a work of difficulty. It was four o’clock on Thursday afternoon, the earliest day on which Valentine thought he could go to Champion Place With decency.

“Oh, I am so very pleased to see you! ” she exclaimed, and, indeed, she looked quite unequivocally pleased as she sat gazing up into his face.

“Didn’t you expect to see me? ” asked Valentine, and it seemed strange that he felt less embarrassed than he had ever done with any woman before.

“Henrietta didn’t, in spite of your fervid assurances,” said Evelyn. “She insisted we should never have an opportunity again. We had a heated argument about you.”

Her manner was so light and vivacious that it was difficult to realize her participation in a warm discussion. She touched the subject so delicately that it was easy to imagine her incapable of deep emotion.

“Then you didn’t agree with Mrs. Tempest?” he suggested.

“I think better of human nature,” she said. “Henrietta declares that is because I have less experience. But in the present case I have fuller information—about Sunday evening, for instance.”

“Sunday evening!” murmured Valentine.

“You look surprised to learn that your sins have found you out! ”

“Oh well, I suppose it’s a way they have,” was the answer.

“After all,” said Evelyn, “your presence today is a sort of justification. You see, Lucilla has a tender conscience. I imagine that was it She had said she was going to church, and the spirit moved her to confess she had been at your flat instead. I didn’t tell Henrietta, because, although you can see she is the sweetest woman in the world, she is apt to be a little intolerant of —of that sort of thing.”

When Valentine had entered the room and seen that Evelyn was alone, he accepted it as a good omen. Fortune seemed to be smiling upon him!

Now, however, he began to think she was playing him a scurvy trick. He had hoped that he might be received on the footing of an ordinary acquaintance, certainly not anticipating this deplorable reference to Lucilla at the outset An effort was requisite to realise that he was regarded by Evelyn essentially as another woman’s admirer, the only question in her mind having originally been whether his intentions were “honourable.” The possibility that he might have no intentions of any kind apparently did not occur to Miss Stainer, whose sole object was obviously to safeguard the interests of her protégée.

“It seems clear,” she persisted, “that matters had gone rather farther than I thought when I asked Henrietta to write to you, though I understand that even now you and Lucilla are not actually engaged to be married.”

“Oh, Lord, no! ” cried Valentine. “Nothing of the sort.”

“Still,” said Evelyn, “after what took place on Sunday evening—”

He wondered what in the world she assumed had taken place; he marvelled that Lucilla should have said a word about her visit to Parliament Court, for, after all, it would have been by no means the first time she had kept her own counsel. Experience had scarcely led him to suspect her of the possession of a peculiarly sensitive conscience. Before he could think of anything else to say, however, she entered the room, wearing her hat as if she had just returned from a walk. As she held out her hand to Valentine, she glanced deprecatingly at Evelyn, her cheeks being becomingly flushed.

“Lucilla,” cried Miss Stainer, “please help me up.”

“Allow me,” said Valentine.

With a cheerful laugh she grasped his Angers.

“You will look after Mr. Brook,” she exclaimed, once on her feet “I really must not stay another moment”

He darted forward to open the door, and before it closed the butler entered with the parlour-maid and the tea-equipage.

“Well,” said Lucilla, sitting down at the table as soon as the servants left the room again, “I hope you admire my Good Fairy. A great many people do, though they get very little encouragement Mrs. Tempest insists that if she’s not careful she will die an old maid. There’s many a true word spoken in jest, you know.”

“Do fairies ever die? ” suggested Valentine.

“How splendidly you have caught the spirit of the thing! ” cried Lucilla, with her eyes on his face. “There really does seem something ethereal about her, though I’ve heard people say it’s a defect”

“To be more than mortal! ”

“Oh well, you know what I mean,” said Lucilla.

“Upon my word, I’m afraid I don’t”

“Too good for human nature’s daily food— that sort of thing,” returned Lucilla, passing Valentine's cup.

“You told Miss Stainer you had seen me on Sunday,” he suggested.

For the moment Lucilla looked a little self-conscious.

“I felt so horribly guilty,” she said, “especially after what had happened during the week. I abominate anything of the nature of deception— really! Besides she asked whether I hadn’t been crying.”

During the next quarter of an hour the burden of conversation rested mainly on Lucilla, and when he rose to say good-bye she drew close to him, so that he could not help feeling that she looked for a warmer farewell than a mere handshake. She asked when she might expect to see him again, and his answer being unsatisfactorily vague suggested Sunday.

“Wouldn’t that be rather soon? ’’ he asked.

“Dear me, no! ” she answered. “These are the most hospitable people in the world. You can’t come too often, as far as we are concerned.”

On the way home he was on the horns of a dilemma, and while he perceived the wisdom of giving the house a wide berth it was utterly impossible to do so since Evelyn lived in it After considerable hesitation, and several changes of mind, he set forth again on Sunday afternoon, as Lucilla had suggested, and on entering the drawing-room was startled to see Derrick Chalmers, whom he had not known to be in London. Standing before the fire, he was apparently engaged in an earnest conversation with Evelyn.

“Of course you two know each other already! ” she exclaimed. “Derrick is only in town for a few hours. I confess we were talking about you, Mr. Brook, for the simple reason that one always knows when one interrupts a discussion of oneself.”

Valentine was enquiring after Mrs. Chalmers, who still lay between life and death in the nursing home at Eastbourne, when they were joined by Henrietta Tempest and Lucilla. As Derrick, very much at home, stood before the fire, with his coat thrown back and his hands in his trousers pockets, talking to the hostess, he seemed to have an eye on Valentine, who felt that he was the cause of amusement It was a relief when the butler announced:

“Mrs, Windermere.”.

CHAPTER XIV

Margaret Windermere seemed at once to dominate the room, and while each of the four women who were present had her own share of attractiveness, many men might have given the palm to the latest arrival. There was more of the woman of the world about her, and while Henrietta seemed to shrink a little into herself Evelyn and Lucilla were too girlish to enter into competition.

Mrs. Windermere was tall, with a stately figure and a great quantity of fair hair, not, however, so fair as Evelyn’s. Having shaken hands with Henrietta, she turned to Evelyn, kissing her first on one cheek, then on the other. To Lucilla she merely nodded, and when it came to Derrick’s turn she barely touched his finger-tips.

“Why, Val!” she cried, seated by his side, while Derrick kept a more general conversation going. “I didn’t expect to see you here. How long have you known these good people? They are really very good indeed, you see. I don’t remember hearing them speak of you.”

“They might easily find a more interesting topic,” he answered.

“Sheer affectation!" she insisted. “You know very well that people talk about you, and naturally you like it. Lionel tells me you are pining for fresh worlds to conquer—is it to be with a tragedy? Take my advice, Vail We have quite enough of that sort of thing.” He noticed that her lip trembled as she spoke, and in fact he knew her well enough to be aware that her manner was a little misleading. Although this was apt to be overwhelming, she was in reality sensitive and emotional. It was easy to understand that she had lost her head under the weight of Lionel’s invective. “You know,” she added, “I never hear your name without something like a pang of jealousy.”

“In that case,” said Valentine, “Miss Stainer was judicious not to mention it.”

“I am sure,” returned Margaret, “you see ever so much more of my husband than I do.”

“Anyhow, I’ve known him longer,” said Valentine, with a smile.

“Oh dear! What an age it seems since we were all boys and girls together! ” she cried, with a sigh. “Not that you are anything but a boy even now. What wouldn’t I give to appear so supremely young and ingenuous! But seriously,

I am thankful to meet you this afternoon,” she said. “Don’t you think Lionel looks horribly ill?”

“I thought so even before I went abroad,” was the answer.

“He has been unlike himself for months,” she continued. “If you want to do him a good turn, you should persuade him to take a long holiday.”

Valentine turned to look into her face. He was almost ashamed of himself for wondering whether she could have any secret purpose to serve; whether, to put it plainly, she wished to get Lionel out of the way by the time Derrick could leave Mrs. Chalmers’s side.

“That’s what I am always doing—in and out of season,” said Valentine.

“You can’t pretend you don’t have plenty of opportunities,” answered Margaret “If ever I ask why Lionel is late home from the City, it’s always the same excuse. ‘ Oh, I just looked in to see old Val.’ Derrick,” she exclaimed, “Val and I have been talking over old times, when you used both to come to Constable Street and you three were inseparable. Why has Val never married? ” she rather disconcertingly asked.

“I suppose,” replied Derrick, “he finds the chase more exciting than the quarry.” He glanced significantly at Lucilla. “Bat never fear! You’ll see him in at the death some day.”

“Oh, my dear Derrick, the death! ” murmured Evelyn.

When, a little later, Margaret said good-bye, Henrietta followed her out of the room, and before she returned Derrick insisted that he ought to think about catching his train back to Eastbourne. Valentine’s face clouded to see Evelyn disappear in his wake, the evident determination to leave him alone with Lucilla being really too barefaced.

“Is anything the matter?” she asked. “It’s rather unusual to find you so tongue-tied.”

“Oh well, you know,” was the answer, “you haven’t been finding much to say for yourself either.”

She had, indeed, scarcely spoken since Margaret’s arrival.

“Mrs. Windermere seldom condescends to take the slightest notice of my existence,” said Lucilla. ‘Whenever she is here I feel rather out of things.”

“The sight of Chalmers almost took my breath away,” cried Valentine. “I was unexpectedly confronted by every one who is associated in my mind with that silver bag. Derrick, yourself, Miss Stainer—”

He paused, hesitating whether to add Margaret’s name to the list, but finally making up his mind to refrain.

“Anyhow,” said Lucilla, “you can no longer have the slightest doubt about me, can you? Everything is so beautifully clear and straightforward as far as I’m concerned. I was merely an unwilling instrument. I wish I had never seen the thing, though in that case you would never have seen me.”

“Nor your Good Fairy,” returned Valentine.

“How stupid it is to give people nicknames! ” murmured Lucilla.

“Scarcely, when they fit so admirably.”

“By the by,” she remarked, when he held out his hand, “I have to go with Mrs. Tempest to a charity concert on Thursday afternoon. She couldn’t get out of taking tickets.”

The implication was, of course, that Valentine would be wasting time if he were to come to Champion Place that day, but ignoring the hint he left the room, and on reaching the hall saw Evelyn in the act of letting Chalmers out of the house.

“How very fortunate! ” she exclaimed. “You are just in time. Now you will be able to see Derrick safely off from Victoria.”

A drizzling rain was falling, and as the three stood together at the open door the outlook could not have been much more dreary, even on a Sunday afternoon in London.

“Good-bye, Derrick,” said Evelyn, as Valentine turned up his coat collar, and when the two men walked away from the house, she still stood at the door looking after them till they rounded the corner.

“I thought you were off a quarter of an hour ago,” suggested Valentine.

“Oh well, I stayed gossipping,” returned Derrick. “There was nothing to do but catch the train, and I was rather earlier than I thought So,” he added, “you managed to find your way to Champion Place after all.”

“In spite of your efforts to prevent me! ”

“My dear Val, I didn’t care twopence one way or the other,” was the answer. “Why in the world should I? What earthly difference could it make to me? ”

“How long have you known Miss Stainer? ” asked Valentine.

“Oh—four years or so.”

“Before she came to live in London?” suggested Valentine.

“If you want to know all about it,” said Derrick, “I first saw her at Chesterborough. I happened to be staying with the Willoughbys— two or three miles away. Margaret Windermere was there, and one morning she offered to drive me into the town. We met the Dean and Evelyn coming out of the cathedral, and the jolly old boy offered to show us round.”

“Then,” said Valentine, “it was Miss Stainer who introduced you to Mrs. Tempest?”

“Right again! What a beggar you are for spotting winners,” cried Derrick. “That was at Constable Street soon after Evelyn settled at Champion Place—about a couple of years ago. Mrs. Tempest said I might call, and there you have the whole story in a nutshell.”

“Have you ever seen Tempest?” demanded Valentine.

“No—never shall,” was the reply.

“How’s that?”

“The beggar's dead.”

“I didn’t know that Mrs. Tempest was a widow,” said Valentine.

“As this is only the third time you’ve met her,” returned Derrick, “I dare say there are heaps of things you’re in the dark about”

“When did her husband die? ” Valentine persisted.

“Last December,” said Derrick. “Any other questions, Val? Don’t be afraid to ask if there’s anything else you would like to know.”

There were one or two things which Valentine in his eagerness to allay Lionel Windermere’s suspicions would have very much liked to know, but he could scarcely hope for enlightenment from his present companion. Moreover, his anxiety concerning Margaret was to a considerable extent overborne by a desire to understand the terms on which Derrick stood with Evelyn —rather intimate terms, it seemed.

“I suppose,” he suggested, as they walked on through the rain, “you have seen a good deal of Miss Stainer lately? ”

“The sort of young woman you can’t easily see too much of—what? ” cried Derrick. “I can tell you one thing, Val! She takes an enormous interest in you—and Lucilla Knowles.”

“I take an enormous interest in her! ” answered Valentine vehemently.

And now at least Derrick was obviously startled.

“The devil you do! ” he exclaimed, with a twirl of his moustache.

“You see,” Valentine explained, “I’m in the most awful quandary. Of course you know all about it—why Mrs. Tempest wrote to me and all the rest of it”

“So you went to scoff and remained to pray! ” suggested Derrick.

“Anyhow,” Valentine admitted, “I was trying to tell Mrs. Tempest as decently as possible that I should never enter her house again when I saw Miss Stainer. That was a revelation to me.”

“By Jove, it would be a revelation to her,” said Derrick. “I don’t mind telling you she hopes to be present at your wedding.”

“You may bet your bottom dollar she will be if ever I’m married,” was the answer.

“You might as well cry for the moon,” Derrick insisted.

“Oh well,” said Valentine, “of course I know I’m sinking deeper into the mire day by day.”

“Yes, you’ll soon be up to your neck,” replied Derrick, as they reached Victoria Station, “ unless you make up your mind to follow the only judicious course and stand clear of Champion Place as long as you live. You’re bound to be found out sooner or later. Then—look out for squalls.”

CHAPTER XV

WHEN Lionel Windermere came to Parliament Court late on the following Wednesday afternoon, he was wearing a neat black overcoat with a narrow astrachan collar. Valentine was surprised to notice that the right pocket had a tendency to bulge, and that Lionel kept his hand over its mouth. For the first few minutes, wonderful to relate, he did not mention his wife, talking about the weather and the improving state of affairs in the City in a rather perfunctory way.

“I know you’ll think I’m the most awful ratter,” he exclaimed presently, “but I—I just want you to look at this.”

As he spoke he took from his pocket a silver bag, holding it out awkwardly for Valentine’s inspection.

“You’ve got to tell me straight—no beating about the bush—is this the infernal thing you found on your shaving-table? ’’

“Let me see! ” said Valentine, and taking the bag, he began to examine it, first on one side, then on the other, as if he were reluctant to make a mistake. “Why, no, it’s not,” he insisted, a few moments later.

“You’re perfectly certain?” demanded Lionel.

“Absolutely. I’ve never seen this bag before in my life. The other had a sort of fringe all round it This is quite plain.”

“If only I could believe you’re right! ” murmured Lionel.

“How could I possibly be wrong?” said Valentine. “Do you think I’m a fool? Besides,” he continued reflectively, “though I shouldn’t care to swear to it I believe this is an inch or two narrower into the bargain.”

“By Jove! You’ve taken a weight off my mind,” cried Lionel, sinking into a chair. “What an idiot I was not to bring the thing before, but it was precious difficult to get hold of it You see, Margaret has been seedy all the afternoon,” he explained, “and when I got home she said she shouldn’t come down again this evening. I spotted the bag in the drawing-room and seized the opportunity. Goodness knows what she would say if she knew. She would think I was mad.”

“Well, now you have recovered your senses, anyhow,” said Valentine, turning away to fill his pipe from a jar on the mantelshelf. Standing there, he happened to look in the glass and saw that Lionel was furtively watching him.

“Val,” he exclaimed, as their eyes met, “I hope to Heaven you’re not trying to fool me! Upon my soul, I don’t know whom to trust I suppose you feel bound to shield the woman! Even if you had recognised the bag, a thousand to one you’d swear you hadn’t”

“Oh well, if you refuse to take my word, what else can I do? ” asked Valentine, trying to look dignified.

“I know what / shall do! ”

" What? ” said Valentine.

“I shall tackle Evelyn Stainer. That’s what I ought to have done a week ago.”

“But didn’t Miss Stainer tell you that Margaret meant to go to the youngster at Tunbridge Wells and changed her mind at the last minute? If you didn’t believe her then, why should you believe her now? ” suggested Valentine.

Lionel, however, made no pretence to be consistent. He was in a condition to change his mind every few minutes, but he left the flat that Wednesday evening still insisting that he should seek an opportunity to cross-examine Evelyn. A difficulty was that he shrank from going to Champion Place lest Margaret should hear of his visit Having succeeded in keeping her in ignorance of his suspicions up to the present, he wished above everything that the same state of affairs should continue; partly no doubt because the time was not ripe for showing his hand, but partly also because of a still faint lingering hope that he might be mistaken.

Meanwhile Valentine, being intensely eager for an excuse to go to Champion Place at a time when he knew that Henrietta and Lucilla would not be at home, came to the conclusion that Evelyn ought to be warned of the possibility of a visitation from Lionel Windermere. Accordingly he set forth at about four o’clock, and on entering the drawing-room found her curled up cosily on the large cushion before the fire, reading a recently published book of poems.

She shook hands without attempting to rise, and indeed a certain amount of caution was necessary to set her feet on the carpet “Did you see Derrick off on Sunday?” she enquired, without any sign of surprise at the visit “I suppose,” she added, “you know Mrs. Chalmers? It’s rather strange that, having so many friends in common, you and I should never have met before.”

“You see,” was the answer, “though I’ve known both Derrick and the Windermeres so long, I am quite out of their set They were born to greatness.”

“But you,” she returned, with a radiant smile, “have achieved greatness, and that is infinitely better.”

“It’s true,” he confessed, “I have been tremendously lucky.”

“Do you set such store on great possessions? ” asked Evelyn.

“They’re not very great, you know. Still, they’ve helped me to do one or two things I was keen on doing.”

“Yes, Derrick told me,” was the answer. “Oh, he has given you an excellent testimonial. Where do your people live? ”

“At Sycamore Road, St. John’s Wood.”

“I know it well,” she said. “My friend Mrs. Fairford lives in Avenue Road. I am going there next week.”

“Which day? ” he asked eagerly.

“Tuesday,” she returned, after a moment’s hesitation. “Don’t you think,” she added, “that Margaret used to be the loveliest girl in the world—when she was Margaret Rattray? ”

“Oh well,” answered Valentine, with a laugh, “there was a time—”

“If that signifies you were one of the countless disappointed swains,” said Evelyn, “you have obviously recovered as perfectly as Derrick himself.”

“You think that he has?”

“I have the most excellent reason for knowing,” she exclaimed, with a laugh.

“I’m afraid there’s one person in the world who doesn’t share your confidence. Lionel Windermere. I came to-day,” Valentine continued, as she sat more upright on her cushion, “ expressly to talk about the fellow. I have heard about the unfortunate disagreement in Constable Street and Margaret’s flight You see, Lionel knows that a silver bag was left at die flat—”

“How did he know? ” demanded Evelyn.

“The dickens of it was I told him.”

“Oh, how could you have been so—so very indiscreet! ” murmured Evelyn.

“Naturally, I had no idea I was putting my foot into it,” said Valentine. “But Lionel seems to have jumped to the conclusion that his wife was Derrick’s visitor.”

“Mr. Windermere must be a man of the most ungovernable temper,” returned Evelyn.

“Oh well, he was always rather excitable,” Valentine admitted, “and just now he is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. You have only to look at the fellow.”

“Yes, that was the line I took with Margaret,” said Evelyn. “Those two are really very fond of one.another. I know she is rather reckless and extravagant, but Mr. Windermere should, surely, have dealt more frankly with her.”

“He insists,” Valentine explained, “that she would have gone off with Derrick if it had not been for Mrs. Chalmers’s telegram. He believes she left her bag and asked you to get it back; that you sent Miss Knowles. Yesterday he actually brought Margaret’s bag and asked me to identify it”

“But you—you didn’t! ” cried Evelyn.

Deep as Valentine’s anxiety was to prove Margaret’s innocence, his attention was continually distracted by the charms of Miss Stainer’s changing expression. He was coming to the conclusion that Lucilla’s epithet, the Good Fairy, was after all not strictly applicable. It seemed to signify some one too doll-like, whereas every time he saw Evelyn he became more convinced that she possessed a will of her own. She was not the kind of woman to be treated as a toy! On the contrary, she seemed pre-eminently companionable.

“Oh well, they’re all so much alike. Still,” said Valentine, “I thought it really looked pretty well the same.”

“Then you actually told Mr. Windermere—”

“I’m afraid I told him a downright lie,” said Valentine, noticing her expression of extreme relief.

“Oh, thank you!” she answered; adding at once, “I am sorry you had to do it I know how hateful it must have been. In a sense, too, it was entirely unnecessary. If only Mr. Windermere knew the facts as I know them, he would admit at once that he had nothing in the world to complain of. Now,” she added, “I wonder whether you feel able to take my word for that”

“For anything,” said Valentine, and saw the quick colour dye her cheeks. “But, surely, you can go a step further and tell me who actually did take the bag to Parliament Court”

“I shall not say a word more,” she retorted. “I can only repeat that Mr. Windermere has no cause to feel the remotest uneasiness.”

“He naturally will as long as he believes it was his wife,” said Valentine.

“Then your splendid mendacity failed to convince him! ”

“So completely,” was the reply, “that he hints at coming to cross-examine you in person.”

“No, no, he mustn’t do that! ” she exclaimed. “You mustn’t let him. I count on you to keep him away. Not that I should see him in any case. I shall give instructions that I am not at home.”

“Yet,” suggested Valentine, “a single word would set his mind at rest for ever.”

“You must try to believe,” she said, “that I have a good reason for not speaking it.”

“It can’t,” returned Valentine, “be a very serious reason. It applied to me as well as to Lionel, you know. Knowing I was his friend, you wished to keep me in the dark also. You told Miss Knowles not to mention your name or even her own.”

“Lucilla,” said Evelyn cordially, “has been most splendidly loyal.”

“She would never have given you away,” he continued. “Yet, quite gratuitously, you let me into a portion of the secret by inviting me here.”

“Yes, I dare say that seems inconsistent,” Evelyn admitted. “It’s true I should have preferred to have nothing to do with you, but then a complication arose. Lucilla’s interests must be taken into consideration. I felt a greater responsibility for the reason that it was I who in the first place sent her to your flat.” Valentine told himself that this would be an excellent opportunity to dispel her illusion concerning himself and Lucilla, but then he perceived that, after all, it might not be an illusion as far as Lucilla was concerned. Moreover, he felt as much afraid as on the day he entered the house for the first time that a frank disclosure would inevitably bring his visits to a sudden end.

“As regards Mr. Windermere,” said Evelyn, “just one word more before we put the subject aside. I have already told you that he has no genuine reason for complaint. I want to insist that you need not treat the affair too tragically.” “But, don’t you see,” urged Valentine, “that for Lionel it threatens to develop into a tragedy. He is keeping his wife under close observation, biding his time till he can accuse her to her face. He is capable of anything—an action in the Divorce Court, for instance.”

“Of course, he must never be allowed to go so far as that! ” exclaimed Evelyn.

“You can prevent anything of the kind by simply telling him the actual facts of the case.” “Naturally, that is what I should have to do,” she admitted. “I should have to insist on making everything perfectly dear. Frankly,” she continued, “I am immensely disappointed that Mr. Windermere has heard a single word about the affair. He wouldn’t if you hadn’t told him, you know. Now, by way of an amende,” she entreated, “please do your very best to prevent him from coming to ask me a lot of tiresome questions.”

As she ceased speaking, the door opened and Henrietta entered, followed by Lucilla. They both looked surprised to see the visitor, who stepped forward a little self-consciously, offering his hand to Mrs. Tempest.

“I hope you enjoyed the concert,” he said.

“Not well enough to stay till the end,” she answered.

He turned to Lucilla.

“So you didn’t really forget we were going! ” she exclaimed, with a lift of her black eyebrows.

“Nor,” said Henrietta, as he looked embarrassed, “that we should soon be coming home.”

Valentine walked away from Champion Place that afternoon with one idea which for the time thrust every other out of his mind. Evelyn had asked him to do something for her. She was obviously anxious that Lionel Windermere should not come to the house, and accordingly Valentine determined to spare no effort to keep him away.

CHAPTER XVI

“VAL,” exclaimed Lionel Windermere on Friday afternoon, “I pretty well put my foot into it on Wednesday. I told you that Margaret said she shouldn’t come downstairs again that evening. I thought I should be safe in nailing her bag for an hour or so. When I got home from here I went straight to the drawing-room to put it back, and there she was, lying on the sofa. Her head was better, she had come down, and what was more, she had wanted a letter she had left in the accursed thing. Of course it couldn’t be found.”

“Why, no, as it happened to be in your pocket,” said Valentine.

“You see,” Lionel explained, “unfortunately it was in my hand when I went to put it back from where I had taken it. Margaret spotted it at once—”

“You don’t mean to say,” cried Valentine, “that you told her what you had been up to!”

“Upon my word,” said Lionel, “I didn’t quite know what to do for the moment. I was bound to make some sort of an excuse, and I said I had been buying her a new bag—a gold one, for a present, you know. I explained that I had taken the other as a pattern.”

“Not particularly convincing,” suggested Valentine.

“Oh, she believed me all right,” said Lionel.

“Although you hadn’t bag number two about you! ”

“I had to say it was going to be sent home in the morning,” was the answer. “I took care to buy it on my way to the City; but I’m fed up with this sort of thing! ” exclaimed Lionel excitedly. “If only I could feel certain I’m wrong, upon my soul, I believe we might make a fresh start. But this infernal suspicion’s everlastingly cropping out. I go to bed thinking of it. I lie awake hours in the night. I get up in the morning feeling I can never get through another day without blurting it out.”

“My dear fellow,” Valentine insisted, “whatever you do, you must consume your own smoke.”

“I’m going to tackle Evelyn,” said Lionel.

“And spoil everything! Only leave it to me, and I fancy I may soon be in a position to satisfy your mind.”

“Good Lord! You’ve heard something fresh! ” exclaimed Lionel eagerly.

“Enough to convince me-"

" To convince you of what? ”

“That Margaret has never been inside this building. That you have no earthly reason for dissatisfaction with anything she has done.”

“What’s the use of telling me that? ” demanded Lionel. “Generalities are no good. I want something definite.”

“You can’t have it yet.”

“Shall I ever have it? ” cried Lionel, burying his face in his hands.

“Yes, if you don’t put your oar in,” was the answer. “I am on the job. I am by way of getting to the bottom of it I’ve already learnt something—”

“There’s only one thing that matters,” Lionel insisted. “Nothing else will convince me that Margaret wasn’t here that Monday evening. Tell me the name of the owner of the bag.”

“Not to-day,” said Valentine. “I haven’t got so far as that yet but I shall before long. Meantime I give you my word. When you know all the facts, you will be the first to admit that your wife was not to blame for anything that happened after she left Constable Street”

With the most perfect confidence Valentine was quoting Evelyn. He realised, however, that her assurance might not appear so convincing to Windermere as it had done to himself.

Lionel, indeed, left Parliament Court that afternoon still under the impression that there was a conspiracy to shield Margaret, though he promised to leave Evelyn alone for the present Accordingly, Valentine persuaded himself that the least he could do was to set her mind at rest, and it was disappointing to hear that only Lucilla was at home.

“Did you want to see Miss Stainer very particularly? ” she asked, when he hinted at his reason for coming this afternoon.

“Why, yes, I did, rather,” he admitted.

“Can I give her a message?” suggested Lucilla; adding impulsively, “You can’t imagine how curious you make me feel. You have only seen her two or three times, and I wondered what in the world you could find to talk about all the time you were here while I was at the concert on Thursday.”

“Oh well, we were discussing the silver bag,” said Valentine.

“Then that accounts for it! ” cried Lucilla.

“Accounts for what? ”

“Now I begin to understand why she told Jenkinson she was ‘not at home ’ to Mr. Windermere, though he has only been inside the house once since my arrival.”

“That was on Monday, the twentieth of February,” said Valentine.

“Did Miss Stainer tell you? ” asked Lucilla, for Lionel’s name had not been mentioned between them before.

“Windermere and I are old friends,” returned Valentine.

“Why didn’t you say a word to me?” she demanded reproachfully.

“Well, why should I? ” he said.

“Oh, of course,” she answered, “it’s easy to see he is connected in your mind with my first visit to Parliament Court. We have talked about that often enough, and it seems rather—rather shabby to have kept anything back.”

“Although you, for your part, kept even your address a secret until your hand was forced,” he suggested.

“Ah, but why?” she retorted. “Simply because I couldn’t speak out without giving some one else away. But, surely, you had no reason for silence.”

“Anyhow, I didn’t wish to drag Windermere’s name into it,” said Valentine.

“Then why have you dragged it in now? ”

“I am afraid one gets led on,” he answered, wishing that he had been more cautious.

“Then,” said Lucilla reflectively, “Mr Winder-mere suspects it was his wife who left the bag at Parliament Court that Monday.”

“Oh well—since you’ve hit the right nail on the head,” Valentine reluctantly admitted, “I may as well tell you that he swears there would have been an elopement if the god in the machine had not taken the form of a telegraph boy.”

Lucilla was silent for a moment.

“After all,” she said slowly, “there may be some sort of method in Mr. Windermere’s madness.”

“That is absolutely impossible,” Valentine protested.

“How can you be certain of that? ” demanded Lucilla.

“I am—perfectly certain.”

“Why?” she exclaimed, with her eyes on his face.

“Because Miss Stainer assured me that if only Windermere knew all the circumstances he would see there was no reason to blame his wife.”

“That is quite likely,” said Lucilla.

Valentine noticed that she was breathing rapidly. Her face was unusually flushed, and she seemed to be struggling to control her excitement “Upon my word,” he answered, “you are making confusion worse confounded Although Miss Stainer insisted that Margaret Windermere was not to blame, you still declare that Chalmers would have gone off with her if it had not been for the telegram from his mother.”

“I said nothing of the kind!” cried Lucilla. “Mrs. Windermere may be the most innocent person in the world, and yet Mr, Chalmers may have been on the brink of an elopement”

“After all, it takes two—”

“Yes,” she interrupted “But Mrs. Winder-mere need not have been one of them.”

CHAPTER XVII

NO. 22 is one of the smaller houses in Sycamore Road, St John’s Wood; a square-looking box of a house, the stucco front never having been painted. On three sides of it is a fair-sized garden, shut in by a brick wall and a row of lime-trees, recently pollarded to allow Mrs. Brook to see the few vehicles which pass that way.

She never left her room, the pleasant, light-papered bedroom on the first floor: a grey-haired woman, not very old, but for many years seldom free from pain. Nevertheless she was usually able to greet Valentine with the ghost of a smile. The difficulty was to keep her mind employed, since she seemed unable to concentrate her thoughts on a book or any description of fancy-work. She would sit for long hours with her hands idle in her lap, without speaking, although she found a resource in Nurse Watson, a small, dark-haired, middle-aged woman, whose gossip bored Sibylla to death.

Sibylla, however, had revived in the most remarkable way since the removal to Sycamore Road, the first fruit of her brother’s success. The colour had returned to her cheeks again, the brightness to her eyes, and although she had been disappointed by his departure from home in favour of the bachelor flat at Parliament Court, he never left her many days without a visit At four o’clock on Tuesday afternoon he was waiting in Sibylla’s drawing-room until Nurse Watson brought word that Mrs. Brook was awake after her siesta. The room had a window opening on to the back garden, than which nothing could look much more melancholy this wet afternoon. Rain was falling in thick, slanting lines, broken now and then by a stronger gust of wind.

In one comer of the room stood a small grand piano, and on the overmantel a few photographs: one of Lionel Windermere, another of Margaret, a third of Derrick Chalmers, all taken three or four years ago, and left behind by Valentine.

Already Sibylla had been told about Evelyn Stainer and the episode of the silver bag, although Valentine had experienced a little embarrassment in treating of Lucilla’s connection with it. Sibylla found it difficult to understand his reason for cultivating Miss Knowles’s further acquaintance, and when he suggested that it was “Oh well, just a bit of a lark, you know! ” she reminded him, in her elder-sisterly way, of the fable: “It was play to the boys and death to the frogs, Val!” “Yes, I know, but which is which?” he answered, with a laugh.

In any case Sibylla took the warmest interest in the episode, which Valentine, this Tuesday afternoon, insisted was becoming more complicated than ever.

“To begin with,” he said, “Lionel pretty well convinced me that it actually must have been Margaret I never felt so sorry for anything in my life as for having opened his eyes. But then Evelyn put a different complexion altogether on the business. She went out of her way to repeat that if Lionel knew all the facts of the case he would admit that he had nothing to complain of. Now, Lucilla, who must be in the know, admits that old Derrick was on the verge of bolting with some woman or other, while yet she seems to leave Margaret out of it”

“Is it possible,” asked Sibylla, “that the woman could have been Miss Stainer?”

“No, it isn’t,” was the peremptory answer. “My dear girl! You don’t know what you are saying. It’s rank blasphemy, though of course you have never seen Evelyn. Good gracious!

If she and Derrick cared for one another, why in the world shouldn’t they get married in the ordinary way? I would stake my life she has never been inside Parliament Court. She wasn’t dragged into the affair till Lionel fetched her from Champion Place at half-past eight or so that Monday evening. By that time Derrick must have started to Eastbourne.”

“Still,” urged Sibylla, “I don’t see how you can be so positive. You don’t know what Miss Stainer was doing between half-past five, when Margaret left Constable Street, and eight o’clock, when she reached Grosvenor Gardens.”

“My dear girl, you’re talking through your hat,” said Valentine. “I only wish you could see her. You would soon change your tune.”

“I feel immensely curious to see her,” Sibylla admitted. “Lucilla Knowles too. I can’t imagine how you are going to manage between them. Every time you go to Champion Place you must make Miss Knowles more confident; yet it doesn’t appear that you can see Miss Stainer without going.”

“Anyhow,” exclaimed Valentine, “I hope to see her this afternoon. She let out that she was coming to Avenue Road—to Mrs. Fairford’s. I’ve looked up the number, and as soon as I’ve had a peep at the mater I mean to walk up and down in front of the house till Evelyn comes out”

“Well,” cried Sibylla, with a laugh, “you must be keen to walk up and down anywhere in this rain. She is certain to guess what you are doing—if she should come on such a day.”

“I shall stand a chance of seeing her home,” he answered.

The next moment he was rising to shake hands with Nurse Watson, who presently led the way upstairs to Mrs. Brook’s room. Having spent ten minutes talking to his mother, Valentine explained that he had an important engagement, and going down to the hall, put on his overcoat, turned up the collar, and declined Sibylla’s offer of an umbrella.

“What a saturating afternoon! ” she exclaimed, letting him out of the house and standing under the porch while he crossed the front garden to the wooden gate, intending to turn to his left in the direction of Avenue Road. But before he had time to shut the gate behind him he darted eagerly forward. There was Evelyn, wearing a long mackintosh coat and carrying an umbrella, walking quickly towards the house.

“Oh, what a dreadful day! ” she said, coming to a standstill. “Henrietta tried to persuade me not to go out, but I was obstinate, and I am punished accordingly. I couldn’t see a taxi anywhere.”

“I—I wonder,” suggested Valentine, “whether you're prepared to make for any port in a storm! You might come in and see my sister,” he added, “while I find you a cab.”

“That would be giving you so much trouble,” she murmured hesitatingly.”

But he had already pushed the gate farther open, and saw that Sibylla was still standing under the porch. He took Evelyn’s umbrella, holding it over her as she accompanied him into the garden, and while she was still a yard or two from the house went through a form of introduction. A few minutes later she was standing before the drawing-room fire, while Sibylla, at once favourably impressed, kneeled down on the hearth-rug by her side.

“I feel that I have fallen among friends,” said Evelyn, with a glance round the room.

“Oh well, I think you have, you know,” returned Valentine.

“I wasn’t thinking of you and Miss Brook,” Evelyn explained, with a laugh. “But the moment I entered my eyes fell upon Derrick and Margaret Windermere and her husband—”

As she was speaking the door opened, and Nurse Watson entered with an expression of mystery on her face.

“Might I speak to you for a moment, Miss Brook? ” she asked.

Murmuring a word of apology, Sibylla left the room.

Valentine stood watching the guest as she rested a foot on the fender, without being able to find a word to say for himself. The rain was still beating against the window, and the afternoon was rapidly darkening. Sibylla looked a little embarrassed on her return a few minutes later.

“My mother,” she explained, “heard that we had a visitor. Although you would think she takes so little interest when anybody but Val talks to her, she seems to know whenever we are not alone.”

“Did you tell her who was so astonishingly here? ” asked Valentine.

“Yes, and of course she wanted to know who Miss Stainer was, and all about her. I am afraid,” said Sibylla, with a glance at Evelyn, “her curiosity isn’t yet quite satisfied.”

“I think I understand! ” cried Evelyn. “Mrs. Brook has so few interests left in life that little things excite her. Do you mean that she would like to see me? ”

“Why, that is just what she is longing for,” was the answer, “if you would only let me take you to her room for a few minutes.”

“While you are upstairs,” suggested Valentine, following them into the hall, “I suppose the best thing I can do is to look for a taxi”

CHAPTER XVIII

TO find a taxi-cab on such a wet afternoon did not prove an easy task. Valentine had to walk as far as St. John’s Wood Road Station, and on returning to the house he was admitted by his sister, who explained that Evelyn was still upstairs.

“It was really a wee bit awkward,” she continued. “Poor mother! She seems to think that you and Miss Stainer are by way of being half engaged—”

“Good Lord! ” cried Valentine. “She didn’t say so right out? ”

“Well, she hinted at it rather broadly. Goodness knows what nurse had been telling her before I took Miss Stainer up. But mother generally confuses things, and she calmly announced that a good son invariably made a good husband.”

“How did Miss Stainer take it? ” asked Valentine.

“Charmingly,” said Sibylla. “Everything is charming about her. She can’t get away because mother is clinging to her hand.”

“She didn’t seem to be offended?” urged Valentine.

“Oh dear no! ” said Sibylla.

At that moment Evelyn came downstairs attended by Nurse Watson.

“There was only one taxi to be had,” exclaimed Valentine. “I thought, perhaps, you would let me drop you at Champion Place.”

Without offering the least objection, Evelyn said good-bye to Sibylla, who stood beneath the porch nodding and smiling till the others entered the cab.

“What a dear old lady Mrs. Brook is,” said Evelyn, as they were driven away from the door. “And how highly she thinks of her son! It must be splendid to feel you are able to make her so comfortable.”

“I was unfortunate enough to miss you the last time I came to Champion Place,” remarked Valentine.

“Oh well, that scarcely mattered, as you saw Lucilla,” was the answer.

He remained silent for a few moments at this.

“Anyhow,” he said at last, “I came expressly to tell you that you’re not likely to be bothered by Windermere for the present”

“How did you manage to pacify him? ”

“By simply repeating what you told me: that when he knew all the circumstances he would have no cause for complaint I am beginning to think,” Valentine continued, “that I managed to get on the wrong scent.”

“That is always so easy, isn’t it? ” murmured Evelyn.

“Yes, very,” he admitted. “But then it ought not to be very difficult to return on one’s tracks and pick up the right one.”

“It is often impossible,” she said.

It seemed to Valentine that the time had come to set himself right with her, even at some risk. He could not help feeling encouraged by what Sibylla had said, and seated in the taxi-cab, close by her side, the opportunity appeared as if it were made for the purpose.

“I wonder,” he began, “whether you will let me explain—”

“What? ” she demanded.

“Something that I am immensely anxious you should know! ”

“About yourself?” she said quietly.

“Why, yes—”

“Mr. Brook,” answered Evelyn, with an air of great determination, “there can be no explanation which is suitable either for you to make or for me to hear.”

As she spoke she drew her wet mackintosh more closely about her, edging farther into her corner. Her eyes were fixed resolutely on the driver’s broad back, and she sat extremely erect, as if she wished above everything to avoid contact with her companion.

“We won’t be egotistical,” she said. “We will talk of something other than ourselves— about Lucilla, for instance.”

To his chagrin she continued to do so persistently, his only consolation being that at least she must have some suspicion of what he had wished to say. In the face of her attitude, however, it seemed almost worse than useless to continue, and, as a matter of fact, Valentine scarcely spoke again until the cab turned the corner of Champion Place. As it stopped at No. 7, Lucilla was coming out of the house, and for a moment the three stood in a group on the wet pavement, regarding one another in silence.

“I have had a quite adventurous afternoon! ” cried Evelyn, the first to speak. "As I was coming from Mrs. Fairford’s, whom should I see but Mr. Brook! He was chivalrous enough to protect me from the storm, or else I should be even wetter than I am.”

“Can I give you a lift anywhere?” asked Valentine, turning to Lucilla.

“Oh, thank you,” she answered, in an unnaturally high-pitched voice. “I am only going just a few yards to the chemist’s.”

“Then I think I’ll be getting along,” he said, and as Evelyn entered the house and Lucilla walked stiffly away, he took his seat in the taxi-cab.

On the whole, Valentine passed the next few days in higher spirits than usual. Although so little had been said, the fact that Evelyn had prevented him deliberately from saying more seemed, in a way, a good omen. Hitherto one of his difficulties had been the conviction—as he assumed—on her part that he was an admirer of Lucilla’s. He felt certain now, however, that her eyes were open, and in spite of her attitude during the journey home he had the impression that she was by no means irrecoverably annoyed. His hopes ran riot, and it remained for Henrietta to cast them down.

He met her a few doors from his club in Pall Mall, on her way, she explained, to Regent Street The weather had turned delightfully fine after the recent heavy rains, and having gone in the first place to the Army and Navy Stores Mrs. Tempest had walked across St James’s Park.

“This is precisely the opportunity I longed for!.” she exclaimed. “I wonder whether you have a quarter of an hour to spare. I have something really rather important to say to you.”

“I hope,” answered Valentine, turning to walk by her side, “that I haven’t been putting my foot into it”

“I’m afraid you have. The only question is, whether you have failed to see exactly where you were going.”

“Well, now, what have I done? ” asked Valentine, as they rounded the corner of Waterloo Place.

“Anyhow, you have made Lucilla miserable,” was the answer. “If you don’t mend your ways, you will end in the same state. You will fall between two stools. She is horridly jealous.”

“Jealous—Lucilla! ” cried Valentine.

“Oh, please don’t try to look so provokingly ingenuous! ”

“Upon my word it was sheer astonishment,” he protested. “Astonishment, too, that Lucilla should confide her sentiments to you.”

“Of course,” said Henrietta, “she does nothing of the kind. But I have eyes in my head, and the other evening, when you brought Evelyn home in a taxi, proved the last straw.”

“Does Miss Stainer know you are tackling me? ” asked Valentine.

“How ridiculous! She would never forgive me. Still, she is bound to notice the change in Lucilla. There will be no peace—”

Henrietta broke off as she made her way through the crowd at Piccadilly Circus, and turning the corner of Regent Street Valentine exclaimed:

“There’s not much peace for me, anyhow.”

“But then you have only yourself to blame,” she returned, fixing her half-sympathetic, half-amused eyes on his face.

“Because I saw Miss Stainer too late!” he said.

“That is what I wish,” she answered. “To make you realize it is too late, though you certainly saw Evelyn before you accepted my invitation.”

“If I hadn’t, I should have refused it.”

“Then you had simply been amusing yourself at Lucilla’s expense after all! ”

“Oh well, I don’t fancy it would have cost her very much,” said Valentine.

“Still, it was a case of the predatory male! But you builded better than you knew, my friend. I feel sincerely sorry for Lucilla. For you, also, though you deserve your fate.”

“Is it likely to be a very malign one? ” suggested Valentine,

“Perhaps,” was the reply, “you are merely entertaining yourself with Evelyn in her turn.”

“Ah, no,” murmured Valentine, with a good deal of feeling; “you mustn’t say that, you know.”

“Surely,” said Henrietta, “you can’t imagine that she could ever, in any conceivable circumstances, give you a second thought Lucilla has done nothing amiss. You have succeeded in making her fond of you. You can’t leave her in the lurch without earning Evelyn’s contempt. To hint that it was she, herself, who had been the cause of your defection, would be the unpardonable sin.”

For a few minutes they walked along Regent Street in silence, which Valentine was the first Jo break:

“I suppose you have some definite purpose in dropping on me this afternoon.”

“I hoped that a word in season might bring you back to your allegiance,” she returned.

“I owe none to any woman in the world but Evelyn,” he exclaimed.

“Nothing would ever induce her to accept it,” said Henrietta. “To tell you the truth, you have rather disconcerted me by showing your colours so plainly.”

“Isn’t that generally the best thing to do? ”

“Y—es, perhaps,” she answered. “Yes, I dare say it is, but there are certain inconveniences. I must take time to think things over. At present there seems only one certainty.”

“What is that? ” demanded Valentine.

“For everybody’s sake—your own, Lucilla’s, even for Evelyn’s—”

“For Evelyn’s! ” he murmured.

“Oh, pray don’t misunderstand me. For the sake of saving her annoyance merely. For everybody’s sake we mustn’t go along in this way,” Henrietta insisted, and coming to a standstill at the comer of Hanover Street she held out her hand.

CHAPTER XIX

HAVING seen Mrs. Tempest cross the road, Valentine hesitated for a few moments, then instead of retracing his steps to the club he walked to Oxford Circus and boarded a motor-bus for Sycamore Road There he spent a quarter of an hour with his mother, who tantalized him by innumerable inquiries concerning Evelyn, then went downstairs again to Sibylla and lighted a pipe.

Walking about the room with his hands deep in his trousers pockets, his flushed face boyishly eager, he repeated the substance of his recent conversation with Mrs. Tempest.

“What I can’t quite make out,” he continued, “is how she managed to see what was going along. I could have sworn I had succeeded in keeping my end up.”

“Ah,” said Sibylla, “but perhaps you told Derrick—”

“What has that got to do with it? ” demanded Valentine.

“He may have told Mrs. Tempest or Miss Stainer herself that things were not what they seemed.”

“Derrick told Evelyn that I—”

“I can see him doing it,” cried Sibylla. “He would make a joke of it and thoroughly enjoy it.”

“Anyhow, Mrs. Tempest couldn’t have been more discouraging,” said Valentine. “She insists I don’t stand the shadow of a chance, and,” he added lugubriously, “I suppose, as a matter of fact, I don’t”

“You ought certainly to be off with the old love before you can expect to be on with the new,” suggested Sibylla.

“Good Lord! Don’t you see the fix I’m in! ” he cried. “If I speak plainly to Lucilla, I ruin myself with Evelyn.”

“If you speak plainly—yes. It’s a case for diplomacy, if ever there was one. You must admit that Miss Knowles has been hardly treated, but surely there are a dozen little ways to show her gradually that—”

“That I’m not taking any,” said Valentine quietly.

“When you have led up to the climax,” Sibylla continued, “you will have to be patient Miss Stainer may stand on her dignity to begin with, but if you keep in the background for a few months, till the affair has blown over, what is to hinder you from making a fresh start? I really don’t see that your case is utterly hopeless, and after all you deserve a penance, you know, Val.”

Sitting down astride a chair, he rested his arms on its back while he puffed at his pipe, and gradually grew more cheerful. Sibylla possessed an average amount of common sense, and her advice was by no means to be disdained. He would seize every opportunity which remained to him at Champion Place to open Lucilla’s eyes— gradually, as his sister proposed.

“Val,” she exclaimed abruptly, “such a curious thing happened yesterday. The new vicar called. He is quite young and really nice-looking. This is his first living. He used to be a curate at a place called Colbourne, a small Surrey village. While we were talking,” Sibylla continued, “he caught sight of Derrick’s photograph.”

“Does he know old Derrick? ” asked Valentine.

“Of course,” said Sibylla, “I insisted that he must be mistaken.”

“What in the world about? ”

“It seems scarcely possible that Derrick can be married.”

“Married! Good Lord! ” exclaimed Valentine, with a sceptical laugh.

“Still, Mr. Wentworth ought to know,” said Sibylla. “He declares that he performed the ceremony.”

“When—where, in Heaven’s name?” asked Valentine.

“Why, at Colbourne, where he was the curate. He was perfectly certain, though it’s true he didn’t even know Derrick’s name. He had forgotten that altogether. Of course,” Sibylla continued, “the photograph was taken some years ago——”

“Derrick hasn’t altered a scrap,” Valentine admitted—“not a scrap. He looks just the same to-day.”

“And,” urged Sibylla, “he is too striking-looking to be easily confused with anyone else. His height, his wide shoulders and his moustache.”

“When was this interesting ceremony supposed to take place? ” asked Valentine.

“On the last day of the year,” said Sibylla. “By special licence. The Vicar of Colbourne received a letter fixing the time, and he asked Mr. Wentworth to officiate.”

“Was he able to describe the bride? ” exclaimed Valentine, after a short pause.

“No,” was the answer. “He didn’t seem to have the least idea whether she was tall or short, dark or fair, young or old. The couple drove up alone in a motor-car just as he was entering the church to be ready for them. The bride wore a loose coat, and only put back her veil as she stood at the altar. They spent a few moments in the vestry afterwards,” Sibylla explained, “then shook hands with Mr. Wentworth, and drove off again at once. He hadn’t given them another thought till he recognised Derrick’s photograph yesterday afternoon. I suppose,” suggested Sibylla, “it would be possible to find out all about it from the register.”

“I’m not going to pry into Derrick’s private affairs in that way,” cried Valentine. “I’m fed up with that sort of thing as it is. If he had wanted me to know, he would have told me. A hundred to one Wentworth has made a bloomer.”

Rising from his chair, Valentine came to the hearth-rug, stooping to knock out his pipe in the fire-place. Standing upright again, he gazed for some time at Derrick’s photograph, while Sibylla attentively watched her brother’s face.

“Val,” she exclaimed presently, “isn’t it possible that if Derrick really is married his wedding might have something to do with the affair at Parliament Court? ”

“You are suggesting,” said Valentine, frowning at the portrait, “that the visitor may have been his wife.”

“If he had one, what was more likely than that she should have gone to see him? And Miss Stainer insisted that Lionel had no reason to blame Margaret.”

“What about Lucilla’s insinuation that another woman was concerned? ” demanded Valentine.

“My dear,” said Sibylla, resting a hand on his shoulder, “although you shrink from speaking of it, I believe we have both the same notion in our heads.”

“What, in Heaven’s name, is yours?” cried Valentine.

“You told me that Derrick seemed to be on very friendly terms with Miss Stainer—”

“Good Lord! ” Valentine impetuously interrupted, “it wasn’t many minutes ago that you were doing your best to persuade me my case wasn’t hopeless. Now you suggest that Evelyn is a married woman! ”

“Val,” murmured Sibylla, “the idea only occurred to me while I was speaking. You know how things flash across one’s mind. You must admit that it would explain a great deal.”

“But why on earth should they make a mystery of it? ” said Valentine. “If Derrick and Evelyn wanted to get married, what was there to stand in their way? Why shouldn’t they have set about it openly? ”

“At all events,” answered Sibylla, “there’s one thing you might quite easily do.”

“What’s that? ” he demanded.

“You could try to find out where Miss Stainer was on the thirty-first of December.”

“How could I do that? ”

“Miss Knowles would know. You could ask her without causing the least suspicion. If Miss Stainer did not leave Champion Place during the week after Christmas, if she did not go away even for a single day, then, naturally, she couldn’t have been married to Derrick in Surrey.”

“The whole thing is the story of a cock and a bull,” Valentine insisted.

But Sibylla thought that he spoke without conviction, and, as a matter of fact, he lost no time in going to Champion Place, when, for once, it was a satisfaction to find Lucilla alone.

CHAPTER XX

A BITTER wind was blowing, and, although Vatentine had walked briskly to Champion Place, it was pleasant to enter the well-warmed room and to sit down close to the fire, holding out his hands to the blaze.

He felt unusually self-conscious this afternoon, inasmuch as he had set forth with the deliberate object of pumping Lucilla, who looked almost as if she had something on her mind as she greeted him. Valentine Battered himself that he led up to the subject rather cleverly.

“The weather’s cold enough for Christmas,” he exclaimed. “By the by,” he added, with an assumption of carelessness, “where did you spend last Christmas? ”

“Here,” she answered. “We didn’t have a particularly merry day. We were entirely alone —we three women.”

“I remember that Chalmers wasn’t with you, anyhow,” Valentine persisted. “The fact is I had lunch with him at his club, before I went to finish the day at Sycamore Road. You would have been jollier somewhere in the country,” he suggested.

“Oh well,” cried Lucilla, “I did go to the country afterwards.” She smiled as if at some agreeable reminiscence.

“Where?” asked Valentine, trying to speak without the slightest eagerness.

“Mrs. Tempest,” she explained, “had an invitation to—somewhere in Warwickshire, I think it was. Anyhow, before she started, she insisted that as it was Christmas time I ought to spend a week or so with my own family—in other words, with Aunt Hannah. Miss Stainer,” Lucilla continued, “had been awfully liberal in the way of a Christmas Box, and although Mrs. Tempest mentioned Clapham I really had ten days’ holiday to go where I liked.”

“So you went off on your own?” said Valentine, although her personal destination possessed very little interest for him.

“You see,” she answered, “I had never stayed at a big Hydro, and I always wanted to see what it would be like. So the day before Mrs. Tempest went away—”

“When was that? ” demanded Valentine.

“I left here on the twenty-ninth of December,” said Lucilla. “Till this day I am afraid she is under the impression that I went to Aunt Hannah’s. So I did, for that matter, but I didn’t stay many hours. I went to Bournemouth and had the time of my life.”

“Then what,” exclaimed Valentine, “happened to Miss Stainer during Mrs. Tempest’s absence? ”

“Goodness knows! ”

“Rather lonely here by herself,” suggested Valentine diplomatically. “I should have thought she would -have offered you a holiday while Mrs. Tempest was at home.”

“Yes, I wondered at the time,” said Lucilla. “But, you know, one likes to be left to oneself now and then.”

“You have no reason to believe she left London after you were out of the way?”

“Whatever makes you hint at such a thing? ” cried Lucilla. “The idea never occurred to me. Why should it? She said she was going to stay at home and, naturally, I assumed she was telling the truth. I really don’t know what she did. I don’t care. At Bournemouth it was simply lovely —dances night after night. I am immensely keen on dancing! There were private theatricals too. I rather distinguished myself.”

Although Valentine had a tell-tale face, he tried not to let it betray the disappointment which he assuredly felt. He had hoped to hear that Evelyn could not possibly have accompanied Derrick Chalmers to Colbourne on the morning of the thirty-first of December, whereas it seemed obvious that she might have done so without either Lucilla or Mrs. Tempest being any the wiser. Knowing that Henrietta was going to Warwickshire, she might have plotted to get Lucilla, also, out of the way, in order to have complete liberty of action for herself.

It seemed useless to pursue the matter further at the moment, and the reference to private theatricals at Bournemouth reminded Valentine of Sibylla’s suggestion that he should seize every opportunity to prepare Lucilla’s mind for the disillusioning about himself which some day must be inevitable.

“By the by,” he remarked, “you have grown less ambitious.”

“Do you think I have? ” she murmured.

“Once upon a time you were so keen to go on the stage that you went out of your way, you remember, to ask me to help you.”

“Oh, but there are so many different ways of helping,” she retorted.

“Anyhow, I should be very pleased to do what I can,” he persisted. “I might think of one or two men who could be useful if you are still of the same mind. After all,” he added, feeling rather brutal, “I suppose you scarcely expect to stay where you are for ever.”

“I don’t,” she admitted, with her forehead full of wrinkles. “Sometimes I begin to wonder whether my days aren’t numbered.”

An appalling presentiment that she was once more on the verge of tears fell upon Valentine. He glanced apprehensively at the door, speculating as to what he should do if Evelyn or Mrs. Tempest should enter and see Lucilla weeping. His thoughts flew back to that Sunday evening at Parliament Court, but now to his intense relief her face began to clear, although its expression remained unwontedly grave.

“I really can’t think about myself to-day! ” she exclaimed, brushing a hand across her eyes. “That’s very unusual, isn’t it? But, to tell you the truth, I have been feeling immensely bothered. I have been feeling quite—quite guilty.”

“What about? ” enquired Valentine.

“I think you ought to have told me earlier,” she explained. “About the Windermeres, I mean. Naturally, I had no idea that Mr. Winder-mere knew of what happened at your flat.”

“If it comes to that,” said Valentine, “I can’t pretend to know very much myself.”

“Do you understand what it is to be between the devil and the deep sea? ” she cried. “I am beginning to think it’s possible to carry what you would call loyalty too far. I hate to give anybody away, but there may be a point when it is hopeless to keep faith with one person without injuring another too cruelly.”

" If you want advice, I ought to know the particular circumstances," suggested Valentine.

Rising from her chair she drew nearer to the fire, standing with her elbow on the edge of the overmantel, as Valentine also found his feet.

“If there’s one thing I detest more than another,” she said, “it is being connected even in the remotest way with the quarrels of married people. I shall not have a moment’s peace while I’m haunted by the fear that the breach between Mr. and Mrs. Windermere is widening.”

“I am trying to hope it isn’t,” was the answer.

“I told him what Miss Stainer said—”

“What did she say? ” demanded Lucilla.

“That, when Windermere knew all the circumstances, he would not have the slightest reason to complain.”

“Was he satisfied with that? ”

“Why, no; not entirely satisfied. Still,” said Valentine, “I believe the fellow is making some sort of effort to suspend his judgement till the time arrives for a full explanation.”

“I think the time has come,” exclaimed Lucilla.

“Upon my word, I’m tremendously pleased to hear you say so,” returned Valentine.

“Still, I shall make it in fear and trembling,” she insisted. "If you repeat what I am going to tell you to anyone besides Mr. Windermere, you will get me into serious trouble. I am in the most difficult position. I was entreated to keep the secret. I promised faithfully never to breathe a word. Until this moment I have kept my promise. I should not speak out to-day if you hadn’t told me that Mr. Windermere was suspicious of his wife. But my conscience is growing really unbearably reproachful," Lucilla added, “and, after all, it is the simplest thing in the world.”

CHAPTER XXI

“SUPPOSE,” said Lucilla, returning to her chair, “that I begin the story after luncheon that Monday—Monday, the twentieth of February. We all went out separately: Mrs. Tempest, Miss Stainer and I. I came home first and had tea by myself in this room at a quarter-past four. Miss Stainer had said she was going to see Mrs. Fairford, and I was surprised that she didn’t get back till eight o’clock had struck. She came down to dinner after Mrs. Tempest and I had finished our soup, and just as she was rising from her chair Jenkinson entered the dining-room to say that Mr. Winder-mere wanted to speak to her.

“A few minutes after she had gone to him,” Lucilla continued, “I heard her leave the house. It must have been quite half-past ten when she returned. I didn’t see her again that Monday night, though I know she sat up rather late in Mrs. Tempest’s room. I had a sort of feeling that something extraordinary was going on, but we all met as usual on Tuesday morning at the breakfast table, and it must have been at a little past eleven that Miss Stainer asked me to go to her bedroom.”

“Had Mrs. Windermere been here that morning? ” asked Valentine.

“Oh dear no. It would have been remarkable if she had—before eleven.”

“I suppose she could scarcely have come without your knowing,” he persisted.

“It would have been utterly impossible.”

“She might have rung Miss Stainer up on the telephone,” suggested Valentine.

“She did nothing of the kind,” was the answer. “I was constantly in and out of the room where it stands. . Besides, the bell can be heard all over the house.”

“Then you are certain there was no communication between Mrs. Windermere and anybody here that morning? ”

“Absolutely certain,” said Lucilla. “Miss Stainer locked the door as soon as we were inside her room. You must understand that I had seen a great deal of Mr. Chalmers since Christmas.”

“Not before? ” asked Valentine.

“Though I had lived here three months,” said Lucilla, “I had never seen his face until about the middle of December. He seemed to appear on the scene quite suddenly, but after I got back from Bournemouth he came almost every day. Of course,” Lucilla continued, “Miss Stainer almost took my breath away. I was never more astonished than when she told me to go to Parliament Court directly after lunch and see Mr. Chalmers.

“One thing is certain,” suggested Valentine.

“Oh, everything! ” murmured Lucilla.

“Anyhow, Miss Stainer could not have known about Mrs. Chalmers’s telegram! ”

“I can’t say what she knew,” exclaimed Lucilla.

“But if she had been present when the wire arrived, what would have been the use of asking to see Chalmers on Tuesday? ”

“All I can do,” returned Lucilla, after a momentary pause, “is to repeat what she told me. I was to go to the flat, to see Mr. Chalmers, and ask for a silver bag which had been left there. I rang ever so many times,” she explained, “without getting an answer, and on my way out I asked the hall porter what time Mr. Chalmers was likely to be home. I heard, of course, that he had gone away for good the previous evening, but that you were expected back from Paris some time on Wednesday.”

“What,” demanded Valentine, “did Miss Stainer say when you told her that?”

At first she seemed quite unable to say anything. She looked most frightfully upset, but I had no fresh instructions till late on Tuesday night. Then she asked me to go again before lunch the next morning and see you. No one could have been more mysterious. She impressed upon me the importance of keeping you in ignorance, not only of her own name and address but of mine. Not a word was to be said to give you the faintest clue to the owner of the bag. Of course,” Lucilla continued, “she really made an immense mistake there. The fact is, she was far too nervous and anxious to realise what she was doing. If I had given you my name, you would never have grown suspicious and all this bother would have been avoided.”

“No,” said ValeItine, “I don’t see that it would have made an atom of difference. The crux was our second meeting. If Windermere had not seen you with me that afternoon outside the Underground Station, and asked who you were, he would never have heard a word about the silver bag. Consequently, he couldn’t have jumped to the conclusion about his wife.”

“He couldn’t have made a more deplorable blunder,” cried Lucilla.

“So I gathered from Miss Stainer,” said Valentine.

“Ah, but I can give Mr. Windermere positive proof,” was the reply. “Of course, I recognized the bag the moment you brought it into your sitting-room.”

“Do you mean you recognized it as Miss Stainer’s property?” demanded Valentine, with a start “I had seen it often enough,” said Lucilla. “It wasn’t very easy to make a mistake.”

“Then,” urged Valentine, “it is actually here— in this house now? ”

“Goodness knows! What does it matter? I have not seen the thing since I gave it back to Miss Stainer on Wednesday evening. No woman could have looked more relieved.”

“You have no doubt,” suggested Valentine, “that it was she who brought it to Parliament Court ? ”

“Have you? ” cried Lucilla, with a lift of her black eyebrows.

“Why in the world," muttered Valentine, “should she want to go to the flat, as Chalmers was in the habit of coming here so often? ”

“They could never count on seeing one another alone in this house,” said Lucilla, with a shrug. “Mrs. Tempest and I were always in and out, you know.”

“You are insinuating,” returned Valentine quietly, “that Chalmers and Miss Stainer are— lovers! ”

“I am insinuating nothing. I am simply stating facts. You must draw your own conclusions.” “ But if they were lovers, what on earth was there to prevent them from being married? ” Then he turned abruptly towards the door. Perhaps they were married!

CHAPTER XXII

VALENTINE’S face wore a portentously solemn expression as he walked away from Champion Place. Before he had gone very far he discovered that he had taken the wrong turning, and, when he had retraced his steps to the right street, he kept his eyes fixed so persistently on the ground that more than once he narrowly escaped being run over.

On reaching Parliament Court he went up in the lift without a word for the boy, who regarded him as a crony. Letting himself into his fiat, he flung his hat on one chair and himself into another, taking out his pipe and slowly filling it. He put it into his mouth without striking a match, however, and a few minutes later was on his legs again, out in the corridor, and on the way to Charing Cross Station.

Less than an hour and a half after he left Lucilla Knowles in Champion Place, Valentine was walking restlessly to and fro in the drawingroom at Sycamore Road, excitedly pouring his troubles into Sibylla’s sympathetic ears.

“I followed your advice,” he exclaimed. “I pumped Lucilla about Christmas, and upon my soul I wish I hadn’t”

“Surely,” urged Sibylla, “it is as well to know the truth, whatever it may be.”

“I’m not certain,” said Valentine. “I know it’s true that Evelyn isn’t capable of the least undesirable action. I am prepared to stake my life on that. If anything appears to conflict with that—well, I would sooner not hear it.”

“Did Miss Knowles tell you that Miss Stainer was away on the thirty-first of December? ” asked Sibylla.

“She was alone in the house with the servants,” said Valentine. “Lucilla went away for ten days on the twenty-ninth. Mrs. Tempest was to leave for Warwickshire the following day. Then Evelyn was free to do as she pleased, to go where she pleased, without anybody’s knowledge.”

“Val,” cried Sibylla, “you believe she sent Lucilla away with a definite object! ”

“Good gracious! ” he exclaimed. “Don’t you see that’s just what I would do anything rather than believe? Why should I? Why is it necessary to imagine that Evelyn was not at Champion Place all the time?”

“Still,” Sibylla insisted, “there’s really nothing I to make it difficult to think she was married at Colboume—”

“Nothing! ” shouted Valentine. “Good Lord! There’s everything.”

He wished it were not necessary to tell Sibylla what he had heard from Lucilla about the ownership of the silver bag, but whatever the consequence might be he could not keep the knowledge to himself. She listened very attentively while he explained that Lucilla had identified Evelyn’s property, and then she came to his side, taking his arm and bringing him to a standstill in the middle of the room.

“My dear Val,” she said, “you must admit that the situation is really very compromising for Miss Stainer unless she is Derrick’s wife. Of course that would explain everything.”

“It wouldn’t explain the reason for secrecy," answered Valentine. “Upon my word,” he added, “ you will drive me out of my senses.”

“At least,” suggested Sibylla, “you will be able to restore poor Lionel to his.”

Windermere’s interests had, in fact, been forgotten; but a few minutes after this reminder Valentine went to the telephone and rang up the house in Constable Street Hearing that Lionel was not at home, he left a message with the butler, asking him to lose no time in coming to Parliament Court On his arrival, Valentine made a strenuous effort to put the last shadow of suspicion out of Windermere’s mind.

“You’re bound to confess,” he recapitulated, “that you have been on the wrong scent from the outset Lucilla is prepared to swear there was no communication between Champion Place and your house that Tuesday morning. Even if there had been it would scarcely matter, as she recognized the silver bag as Miss Stainer’s property.” “Why in the world didn’t the girl say so before? ” demanded Lionel.

“Simply for the reason that she had no idea of what was passing in your mind. As soon as she learnt that you suspected Margaret, she determined to own up.”

“Anyhow,” said Lionel, “there must still be something in the background.”

“The facts we’ve arrived at are quite enough,” Valentine insisted. “Either Margaret is absolved, as Miss Stainer said she would be, or Lucilla is lying. Why should she lie? What conceivable motive could the girl have? ”

“Upon my soul, I begin to think you’re right,” answered Lionel. “You must be right I suppose I’ve been making a confounded idiot of myself. I shan’t have a moment’s happiness till I’ve owned up to Margaret and asked her to forgive me.”

“I shouldn’t do that if I were you,” exclaimed Valentine.

“My dear fellow,” said Lionel, “you don’t understand. For weeks I’ve met my wife day after day with this wretched thing between us. Now, thank Heaven, it exists no longer. I want to start afresh, and how can I do that without making a clean breast? ”

“You feel pretty certain she doesn’t suspect what has been tormenting you?” suggested Valentine.

“I’m absolutely certain—”

“Then, upon my word,” said Valentine, “it seems a pity to upset her mind. I should imagine that, the moment you admit you were capable of thinking she was on the brink of an elopement with Derrick, the fat would be in the fire. For goodness’ sake,” added Valentine, “let sleeping dogs lie.”

CHAPTER XXIII

NOT for an instant did Valentine imagine that Lucilla had come that way without a definite purpose. It was a quarter to four when he left Parliament Court the following afternoon, and saw her a few doors off. He had not felt very well when he awoke that morning, and had even hesitated about going out His head was hot and curiously dizzy, his hands and feet were cold, while he found himself frequently shivering.

Lucilla must have come especially to see him, possibly to make a formal request for the promised introduction to an actor-manager. It seemed probable that her recent explanation made it more difficult to continue to accept Evelyn’s hospitality, while he had, perhaps, succeeded in convincing her of the hopelessness of her quest of himself. For this was what it amounted to, although Valentine never doubted that she was sincerely, if inconveniently, attached to him.

In any event, he felt sorry to see her this afternoon. Apart from the circumstance that he had grown worse since breakfast, and had little inclination for human society, he considered binding the undertaking given to Mrs. Tempest that he would not meet Lucilla again outside Champion Place.

“I say, you know, this is not in the bill,” he exclaimed, as he offered his hand.

“Oh, very well,” said Lucilla, with a pouting expression, “if you’re sorry to see me, I can easily turn round and go away again.”

“Of course I should be immensely pleased,” he insisted, “if I hadn’t promised Mrs. Tempest—”

“I wonder,” she interrupted, “whether you’re as particular about telling the truth to me as you seem to be to her.”

As she continued her way, he felt bound, in spite of his unusual weariness, to walk by her side. Instead of heading for the Underground Station, she turned to the right towards the Embankment, crossing the road under the railway bridge and dodging the tram-cars, in order to walk by the river.

“Anyhow,” Lucilla continued, “you don’t look very cheerful over it I believe you’re still worrying about that wretched silver bag. I really couldn’t resist coming to ask whether you have seen Mr. Windermere.”

They were walking slowly towards the City, and on their left the tram-cars were sweeping by in close succession. On their right a number of barges were carried down seawards on the ebb tide. Somerset House stood a little way ahead, and the dome of St. Paul’s seemed to rise from the central arches of Waterloo Bridge. Valentine always thought it was one of the most impressive views in London.

“I saw him last night,” he answered. “I fancy he is satisfied at last, though he still insists that there’s something in the background.”

“About Miss Stainer? ” cried Lucilla. “Oh, that is quite likely.”

“Ah, now, I don’t care to hear you speak of her in that tone,” was the answer. “You would never have done so a week or two ago. What has happened since? Then, you remember, she was your Good Fairy. Nobody who knows her can imagine she has the least little thing to be ashamed of.”

“Anyhow,” retorted Lucilla, “she can’t have a great deal to be proud of.”

“How in the world," demanded Valentine, “can you bring yourself to put a—a disgraceful interpretation on her visit to the flat? ”

Lucilla hesitated for a moment, and Valentine, feeling he had almost reached the end of his tether, turned to retrace his steps towards the west “I should like to know how you can explain it? ” she murmured.

Not for the first time he fancied she was eyeing him askance.

“It is possible,” he suggested, “that my information is rather more complete than yours. You don’t know that. Derrick Chalmers is by way of being a married man, for instance.”

Lucilla, in her obvious astonishment, came almost to a standstill in the middle of the pavement “Mr. Chalmers—married! ” she exclaimed.

As she walked on again, rather more quickly than before, Valentine, finding it distressing to keep up with her, explained what Wentworth had told Sibylla. Lucilla, however, still looked incredulous.

“It isn’t conceivable,” she protested, “that Mr. Chalmers could be married without Miss Stainer’s knowledge.”

“Perhaps,” said Valentine, “that condition is fulfilled.”

“I believe you are suggesting,” cried Lucilla, “that she is actually his wife! ”

“Anyhow,” he urged, “you must see that in this case her visit to Parliament Court would be satisfactorily explained.”

Valentine had the impression that Lucilla’s feelings were too deep for words. Although he could not understand why she should take the announcement of Derrick’s marriage so much to heart, it seemed evident that she was reluctant to discuss the subject, and when she stopped to bid him good-bye, on drawing level with the Underground Station, he began to wish that he had not enlightened her.

Although he had felt extremely anxious to answer her insinuations against Evelyn’s fair fame, it is possible that Valentine might have kept his own counsel if he had been quite himself. On reaching his flat, however, he well nigh collapsed, and the following morning only left his bed to telephone to Sibylla. The first thing she did, on entering his bedroom, was to take a clinical thermometer from her bag and insert it between his lips; and ten minutes later she was ringing up Mrs. Brook’s doctor. Arriving just before one o’clock, he diagnosed influenza, and during the next three or four days Valentine did not leave his room. Although Sibylla returned to Sycamore Road every evening, she spent several hours every day by her brother’s side, and meanwhile his thoughts were constantly with Evelyn. Now, he wished that he had taken definite steps to discover whether she was Derrick’s wife or not. Although he was ignorant of the precise method to set about the investigation, he knew there must be a way of finding out the name of the woman whom Chalmers had married.

Not that Valentine intended to adopt any hole-and-corner means in the future. Although he was determined, as soon as he could get about again, to set his doubts finally at rest, he meant to go openly to work. He would either find an early opportunity of questioning Evelyn or take the train to Eastbourne and tackle Derrick himself.

A week went by after his walk with Lucilla along the Thames Embankment before he felt able to go as far as Champion Place again, and then he was fortunate enough to find Evelyn alone. His pale face at once attracted her attention, and she insisted that he should sit down and tell her what had kept him away from the house so long.

“Have you heard from Derrick lately? ” he asked presently.

“Mrs. Chalmers is beginning to improve at last,” was the answer. “She has been very bad since he was here. He wasn’t able to leave Eastbourne even for a few hours.”

“Or, naturally,” suggested Valentine, “he would not lose a chance of coming to see you again!

“What do you mean? ” cried Evelyn. “How supremely ridiculous! Anyone would imagine you had some kind of objection to his coming.”

“Not at all,” said Valentine, with the uncomfortable sensation that he was making rather a fool of himself, yet finding it extremely difficult, now they were face to face, to put the point-blank question. “It’s precisely what I should expect,” he added.

“Well, so should I,” returned Evelyn, with a laugh. “But I really don’t understand you today. Suppose you tell me the latest news of Mr, Windermere!”

“At last,” said Valentine, and notwithstanding his eagerness for enlightenment he felt almost thankful for a respite, “I’ve actually persuaded him to go away.”

“To join Margaret?” asked Evelyn. “She is staying with the Willoughbys, a few miles from dear old Chesterborough, you know.”

“He talked of Brighton,” was the answer.

“Of course, I know it’s quite the ordinary thing,” murmured Evelyn, “but what a pity that he should go in one direction and his wife in another!”

“Anyhow, he looked a bit more cheerful before he started," suggested Valentine.

“Was that due to you? ” asked Evelyn.

As he sat watching her a few yards away, it seemed impossible to regard her as Derrick’s wife, while yet there remained the visit to Parliament Court to be accounted for. Still, at the moment, it appeared as if the strongest evidence in the world would be unconvincing, just as life would scarcely be worth living unless she were destined for himself. However, he would know the truth before he bade her goodbye this afternoon.

“I suppose it was,” he admitted.

“I should love to hear how you accomplished it,” she urged.

“Upon my word,” said Valentine, “I believe I actually convinced the fellow at . last that Margaret has never been inside my flat”

“Yes,” Evelyn insisted peremptorily, “but how?”

Before there was time to explain, the door opened and Mrs. Windermere was announced, Lucilla and Mrs. Tempest following her into the room. As Valentine took Margaret’s hand, he noticed that she was carrying a gold chain bag.

He was forming a habit of observing such things, and this no doubt was Lionel’s subterfuge.

“This is an immense surprise!” exclaimed Evelyn. “I was just telling Mr. Brook you were staying with the Willoughbys.”

“So I was till yesterday morning,” said Margaret “And I’m off to Torquay to the Mansfields’ to-morrow. I didn’t intend to come to London, only I felt bound to have a peep at Jimmy.”

“How is Mr. Windermere? ” asked Henrietta.

“Not up to much, unless he has improved since I saw him,” was the answer. “Provoking person ! A week ago he protested that wild horses shouldn’t drag him away. Now he is off to Brighton, and I have just missed him. I had my photograph taken at Chesterborough, at Garside’s —you remember Garside’s, Evelyn,” Margaret added, opening her bag and taking out an envelope. “I got the proofs an hour before I left.”

“Rather a decent bag,” Valentine could not help remarking, as she handed the proofs to Mrs. Tempest.

“I have never gone in for a metal bag,” said Evelyn. “I hate everything hard and unyielding —from stools of repentance to human beings. I love everything near me to be resilient”

Valentine knitted his brows as he looked at Lucilla. Her back was turned towards him, but almost as if she could feel the effect of his gaze she faced about, meeting his eye with a rather sickly smile. When the proofs had been handed round and admired, Margaret said she must be going, and experience prevented Valentine from being surprised to see Henrietta follow the visitor out of the room. As he was closing the door after her, Evelyn suddenly exclaimed, “Oh! ” as if she had forgotten something very important Now the opportunity of bringing her to book to-day had gone, and Valentine found himself alone with Lucilla.

“You must have heard what Miss Stainer said,” he exclaimed, turning swiftly to confront her.

“I wasn’t particularly listening,” murmured Lucilla, a little nervously.

“About metal bags in general,” Valentine persisted.

“What—what was it? ” asked Lucilla.

“That she had a dislike for such things, that she had never gone in for one.”

“Oh, very likely! ” cried Lucilla.

“But you,” he returned, “told me that she actually had one, that she brought it to Parliament Court"

“/ told the simple truth,” said Lucilla.

“You imply that Miss Stainer didn’t! ”

“Naturally, she was trying to hide her tracks,” Lucilla exclaimed. “It would be ridiculous to blame her for that. You know,” she continued, “you quite took my breath away the last time we met—how long ago it seems!—but since then I seem to recollect a score of little things, quite unimportant in themselves, but with a sort of cumulative effect, you understand.”

“Then you are inclined to think that Miss Stainer ought, in fact, to be called Mrs. Chalmers ? ”

“Aren’t you? ” demanded Lucilla.

But Valentine left the room without attempting to explain what he was inclined to think, and for that matter, perhaps, he scarcely knew. He made up his mind, however, to return to the attack.

The following day he would doubtless have gone to Champion Place if the doctor had not come to Parliament Court during the morning. The result of yesterday’s expedition was pronounced not to have been quite satisfactory, and the patient must be contented to spend another day or two indoors, especially while the present cold wind continued.

There seemed to be no help for it, and two more anxious days passed, when on the third Valentine could endure the suspense no longer. At whatever risk, he would make his way to Champion Place during the afternoon. Before the time came to set forth, however, he met with the greatest surprise of his life.

CHAPTER XXIV

IT was a dry, but dull, cold, tempestuous afternoon. Valentine stood at his sitting-room window looking down at the river, and waiting for the time to set out, when the bell rang, and, on going to open the door, he found one of the pages waiting to say that a “young lady ” wished to see him downstairs.

“Did she give her name? ” asked Valentine.

“No, sir,” answered the boy.

“Why didn’t you bring her up? ”

“’Cause she wouldn’t come, sir.”

“Where is she? ”

“In the drawing-room,” said the page. Valentine thought that he ought to spare a few minutes.

“All right, I’ll be there directly,” he answered, the message at once driving his thoughts unwillingly to Lucilla. Save his sister, she was the only conceivable visitor, but then she would probably have shown no reluctance to come up in the lift Going to the adjoining room, he spent a few seconds before the looking-glass, brushing his hair, arranging his necktie, and examining the gash which he had made on his chin that morning. Perhaps after all the “young lady” was one of the interviewers who came to see him now and then.

Having reached the ground floor, he made his way to the public room, where there were already several groups at the various round tables. He had no sooner entered than his eyes fell on Evelyn Stainer, who rose from a chair a few feet from the door, as if to attract his attention.

Valentine’s first thought was that he had never seen her—or any other woman in the world—-look nearly so bewitching, the fact being partly due, probably, to her dark fur coat, and a small round hat to match it Her hair looked fairer than ever by way of contrast, and her face was slightly flushed as he stepped forward with his hand outstretched, his delighted expression being quite enough to tell any judicious observer how things stood, at least as far as he was concerned.

“Oh, I say,” he murmured, for inquisitive eyes were on them, “this is a wonderful stroke of luck. Upon my word, in my wildest moments I’ve never dared to expect anything like it”

“I should think not,” she returned, half laughing. “I’ve never dared to contemplate such a visitation myself. Even now I’m here I can scarcely realize my surroundings, but when the mountain would not come to Mahomet, Mahomet went to the mountain, you know. I hope you are feeling better,” she added.

“Oh yes, thanks, though I have been kept indoors since I saw you last I was coming this afternoon,” he said. “Now, you will let me give you some tea.”

“Indeed, I won’t,” she insisted. “This is strictly a business visit—”

“Still, you know, you can’t prevent it from being an immense pleasure too. As far as I am concerned, anyhow.”

“As it is private business,” she said, “please find some nice quiet place where we can talk.”

“I wonder,” cried Valentine, “whether you would care to come up to my flat? ”

“No, I shouldn’t,” was the prompt reply.

There was an archway which converted what had been originally two rooms into one, and, taking her through this, he found a couple of empty chairs near one of the windows. Sitting upright in his, Valentine beamed at his guest, who, he felt certain, could not have come on any trivial errand.

“The last time you were at Champion Place,” she said, lowering her eyes under his ardent gaze,

“you told me you had succeeded in convincing Mr. Windermere that Margaret had never entered this building.”

“Why, yes, I think I satisfied his mind—for the time, at all events,” answered Valentine. “ But, of course, it’s impossible to tell how soon he’ll change it again. The poor beggar’s in the mood for that sort of thing.”

“But,” urged Evelyn, “you had given him a similar assurance before.”

Not wishing to be overheard, she lowered her voice, and Valentine, eager not to lose a word, leaned forward, bringing his head close to her own. This propinquity had the effect of making it difficult to concentrate his thoughts on the matter in hand, because even Margaret’s affairs paled into insignificance in comparison with his desire to arrive at the truth about Evelyn and Derrick. There should be no mistake about it this time.

A curling tress had escaped beneath the closely fitting fur hat, standing out just beyond the tip of her rosy ear. He could not help thinking how much he should like to put it back, although at the same time he admired it exactly where it was.

“Yes—oh yes, any number of times,” he answered.

“Mr. Windermere refused to take your word on those previous occasions? ” said Evelyn.

“I beg your pardon—yes, he did.”

“Mr. Brook! ” exclaimed Evelyn. “You are not listening! ”

“Upon my word,” he answered, “I heard every syllable—”

“Well, then, perhaps you will be kind enough to tell me why Mr. Windermere believed you at last after disbelieving you in the first place? ”

“I suppose I must have been in a more persuasive mood,” suggested Valentine.

“You certainly seem to be in a prevaricating mood this afternoon,” she retorted. “But I imagine that hitherto you had very little faith in your own statement.”

“There may be something in that, you know,” he admitted, thinking that he had never seen anything in the world more beautifully blue than her eyes.

“But,” she continued, “for some mysterious reason you were able to speak with greater conviction.”

“Why, yes, I suppose I was.”

“So that something must have happened to change your mind,” Evelyn insisted.

“They say that second thoughts are often the best,” he returned.

“You did,” cried Evelyn, “really believe it was Margaret in the beginning? ”

“I’m afraid I did.”

“But, by the simple process of reflection,” she said, “you came to the conclusion that you had done her an injustice! ”

“Oh well, you know, I don’t say that was all,” was the answer.

“I want to hear exactly what you said to Mr. Windermere,” urged Evelyn, after a brief hesitation, during which he began to dread the introduction of Lucilla’s name. Ardently Valentine wished that he had never heard it, if only he could still have known Evelyn without her. Instead of at once replying, he began thoughtfully to stroke his chin, while her eyes were fixed on his face. “You don’t seem particularly anxious to enlighten me,” she added.

“I’m not certain I am,” he confessed. “Anyhow, I think I ought to take the precaution to ask for an indemnity.”

“Then it’s obvious you think I may not be pleased! ” she said, showing, however, no sign of displeasure as yet.

As a matter of fact, now that she had recovered from her initial embarrassment, Valentine could not help being struck by her rather unusual friendliness.

“Of course,” he explained, “I couldn’t help seeing that you took elaborate precautions to keep me in the dark-—”

“Still, you flatter yourself you can see daylight at last!” she answered. “You think I maybe annoyed in consequence.”

“You see, the most innocent person dislikes to be found out,” said Valentine.

“Found out! That sounds as if I were not quite innocent So you require an indemnity? ” she asked, with a smile, which prevented him from thinking of anything else at the moment “What form do you imagine my displeasure would be likely to assume? ” she added.

“I can tell you the worst,” he returned, leaning eagerly towards her. “You might hide the light of your countenance.”

“Oh well, I dare say I can promise not to do that,” she whispered.

“At first,” Valentine explained, “I was inclined to agree with Lionel that it was Margaret who came to see Derrick; that she would really have gone away with him if it had not been for Mrs. Chalmers’s telegram.”

Evelyn was leaning back in her chair watching Valentine intently, but now she broke into a quiet and rather scornful laugh.

“How very, very little you understand your friend! ” she murmured.

“Anyhow, that’s what I thought,” said Valentine.

“You don’t think the same now?"

“Not for a moment,” was the answer.

“Please tell me this,” she insisted. “If the bag was not Margaret Windermere’s, whose was it?”

“You will not forget the indemnity? ”

“No, no. Tell me who, you suppose, was the owner.”

“Why—you ! ” said Valentine.

For a few moments there was silence between them, although the room was filled with a buzz of conversation.

“You told Mr. Windermere the silver bag belonged to me,” suggested Evelyn, “and he believed you? What very conclusive evidence you must have brought forward! ”

“I think I did.”

“I shan’t condescend to ask its nature,” she exclaimed; and once more Valentine felt relieved that the introduction of Lucilla’s name was to be avoided—a little surprisingly, he thought The present interview promised to be remarkable, as their first of any length without some reference to her protégée. But, of course, the reason why she did not insist on hearing his authority might be simply that she already knew. “Still,”

Evelyn continued, “I should rather like to learn what you thought the day before yesterday when I told you I had never gone in for a metal bag.”

“Oh well,” murmured Valentine, “I remembered your approval of my own tergiversation where Lionel Windermere Was concerned.” “Yes, but your deception was for somebody else’s benefit,” she remonstrated. “Mine would have been to serve my own ends. Don’t you think that makes a considerable difference?” She was silent again for a moment or two, then she added: “You can’t have forgotten where the bag was found!”

“It was I who found it, you know.”

“On—on your shaving-table,” she said.

“I have not forgotten anything,” was the answer.

“Then it seems to follow,” she gravely insisted, “that you believe I put it there.”

He began to think he had been judicious to ask for an indemnity. It was true that she looked sorrowful rather than angry, more sorrowful than he had ever seen her before. He realized that he had made an unpleasant insinuation, whereas, from the outset, the first article of his creed was her complete inviolability.

Evelyn, however, seemed determined to spare neither herself nor him. She was intent on dotting the “i’s ” and crossing the “t’s.”

“I’m really afraid I am going to risk your more serious displeasure now,” he said. “I seem bound to discover more than you wish me to know—a great deal more than, even yet, you imagine I know.”

“Suppose you let me hear this fresh revelation ! ” she cried.

“I am told,” was the reply, “that Derrick was married at some village in Surrey on the thirty-first of December.”

On the whole, she took the disclosure more lightly than he had dared to hope, and he looked in vain for any heightening colour on her cheeks. Her expression, indeed, was no longer quite so solemn, and gradually a smile began to play about her lips.

“How did you make such a wonderful discovery? ” she demanded.

“Sibylla had a visit from the parson who tied the knot—he recognized Derrick’s photograph.”

“Was your sister told the name of the bride? ” said Evelyn.

“No, she wasn’t told!'

“But,” Evelyn persisted, “you have formed your own opinion? ”

“It was impossible not to put this and that together,” Valentine admitted. “You see, so many things would be accounted for.”

“Such as what? ” she demanded.

“Oh well, for one, the presence of the silver bag on the shaving - table, you know,” said Valentine, with an uneasy feeling that he was beginning to flounder.

“My silver bag?” she exclaimed, with her head slightly on one side and her eyebrows raised.

“Yes,” said Valentine, and thinking to turn the matter off as a jest, although he had never felt more serious in his life, he forced a smile.

“Then, pray,” she asked, “who, do you imagine, is Mrs. Derrick Chalmers?”

Leaning back in his chair, he changed his smile into an even more mirthless laugh.

“Thou art the woman! ” he said.

The same instant she was on her feet. Turning her back, without a word, she crossed the thickly carpeted floor, pushed the door violently open and hastened along the corridor without appearing to be aware that Valentine was following. Through the hall she hastened, quickening her pace as he drew level; she crossed the threshold without vouchsafing him a glance, and made for the taxi-cab which she had kept in waiting.

“Champion Place!” she cried to the driver, and although Valentine shut the door after she had taken her seat she steadily averted her eyes, being ultimately driven away without a word or a smile. She looked, indeed, far from smiling.

For some time after she was lost to view he remained standing on the kerb, and presently reentering the building lost no time in going up in the lift Always a poor hand at consuming his own smoke, Valentine longed to discuss the recent development with Sibylla, or at least to find some one to listen while he talked.

Within a quarter of an hour of Evelyn’s departure he was hanging on to a strap in the crowded compartment of the Bakerloo Railway, and having changed at Baker Street he soon found himself in Sycamore Road.

CHAPTER XXV

AT all events,” exclaimed Sibylla, “Miss Stainer didn’t deny the impeachment.” “If only she had,” answered Valentine, “I shouldn’t care a dash for anything else in the world.”

“You may be perfectly certain of one thing,” his sister said very positively, “it is the sort of assertion any woman would deny unless it were true.”

“I’m not quite convinced of that,” he urged. “She may have thought what I said too outrageous to be worth contradicting. Besides, you must remember that for once in her life she was thoroughly out of temper.”

“She is not too perfect for that,” suggested Sibylla, with a smile.

“She’s not a lay figure, anyhow,” he protested. “She’s just a warm-blooded human being. The question is,” he continued, “whether she was infuriated at the bare suggestion that she could be Derrick’s wife, or because she was found out. You see, if she is his wife, she must have some pretty strong reason for wishing to keep her own counsel. Upon my soul,” he cried, flinging himself into the nearest chair, which creaked under the impetus, “I don’t know what in the world to think. One minute I incline one way, the next the other.”

“If Derrick were married to anyone else,” said Sibylla, “surely it would be more improbable than ever that Miss Stainer should have paid him a visit”

“I don’t care whether she paid him a visit or not,” was the excited answer. “I can swear that whatever she did was just right All I want to know is whether or not she’s married. If she’s not Derrick’s wife, I declare she shall be mine before I’ve done. If she is—well, it doesn’t much matter what’s going to happen.”

“Val,” said Sibylla, going to his side and resting a hand on his shoulder, “when you talk in that reckless way you make me fed rather afraid—”

“Good Lord! What is there to be afraid of? ” he demanded.

“Of that—that other woman!” returned Sibylla.

“Do you mean Lucilla? ”

“Yes,” said Sibylla.

“Poor little beggar!” he cried. “I’m half afraid I may have got her into a scrape. Evelyn is bound to guess who gave her away. If Lucilla has to leave Champion Place I shan’t easily forgive myself.”

“Suppose,” suggested Sibylla abruptly, “that she has not been telling the truth! Miss Stainer declares she has never possessed a silver bag. Miss Knowles insists that she has. A case of one woman’s word against another’s. When I come to think of it,” said Sibylla, “it seems strange that you should hesitate which to believe.”

“I shouldn’t hesitate for a moment,” he expostulated, “but the one has an axe to grind and the other hasn’t.”

“Aren’t you arguing in a circle?” exclaimed Sibylla “If Miss Stainer was never inside Parliament Court till this afternoon, she really has not an axe to grind, you know.”

“What in the world,” he demanded, “would Lucilla have to gain by telling a deliberate lie? ”

“To gain!” retorted Sibylla “A husband, perhaps.”

“By bearing false witness against Evelyn,” said Valentine.

“If she had not thrown herself in your way,” Sibylla insisted, “you would never have seen her a second time. What she said about wishing to go on the stage was probably a subterfuge— an excuse for meeting you again. I dare say she thought you were the sort of man whom a clever woman could twist round her little finger. I’m not sure she wasn’t right. She had reason to believe she was meeting with a measure of success.”

“Not a bit of it,” returned Valentine. “I’ve never for an instant dreamed of marrying her.”

“Remember,” Sibylla continued, with quite unusual insistence, “that Miss Knowles was not in a position to understand your actual reason for accepting Mrs. Tempest’s invitation. Most likely she flattered herself she was succeeding until she began to feel jealous.”

" Good Lord! ” cried Valentine.

“In order to prejudice you against Miss Stainer, she may have pretended to identify the silver bag,” said Sibylla.

But Valentine slowly shook his head.

“I don’t think you’re quite fair, you know,” he returned, and then he hesitated. “It makes one look rather a fool to say so,” he added. “A bit of a coxcomb too. But I suppose after all it’s just possible—”

“Possible,” said Sibylla, “that she fell in love with you that first evening at the flat and determined to follow you up.”

“Oh well,” suggested Valentine, “I don’t see the necessity to suppose that she only had her eye on the main chance, you know. According to you the girl’s a sort of adventuress. Upon my word, I almost wish you were right”

Both Evelyn and Mrs. Tempest had again and again insisted that Lucilla was sincerely fond of him, insinuating even that he had gone out of his way to bring about this state of affairs. At least, he had not been always perfectly judicious, as witness that Sunday when he had tried to comfort her at the flat. Although Valentine stood in little danger of repeating the experience, the conviction that Lucilla was pining for him no doubt made him inclined to think of her a little sentimentally at odd moments, and it may be that he still felt agreeably flattered by her regard.

“If I’m wrong,” Sibylla persisted, “it follows that Miss Stainer was merely romancing when she told you she had never possessed a metal bag.”

“I don’t blame her for that,” said Valentine stoutly. “She may have the most excellent reason.”

“Well, the only one I can imagine," returned Sibylla, “is that she was married to Derrick on the thirty-first of December by Mr. Wentworth down in Surrey.”

Leaving Sycamore Road in an unenviable state of mind, Valentine walked all the way back to Parliament Court, stopping in Oxford Street to get some dinner at a restaurant He had not been long at home and had lighted a pipe, afterwards trying rather vainly to fix his attention on a magazine article, when Lionel Windermere arrived.

“By Jove! ” exclaimed Valentine, letting him into the passage. “You haven’t stayed long at Brighton!”

“It wasn’t a scrap of good, Val! ” said Lionel, entering the sitting-room. “I simply couldn’t stick it another day. I was a nuisance to myself and everybody else. So I turned it up on the spur of the moment and came home.”

“Have you seen Margaret? ” asked Valentine. “I just managed to miss her,” was the reply. “She has gone to Torquay. On the whole, I can’t pretend to be very sorry.”

“Good gracious! What a changeable fellow you are! ’’ cried Valentine. “The last time you were here you were determined to own up and declare everlasting peace.”

“Peace! ” answered Lionel, with a groan. “Sometimes I feel I shall never know a moment’s peace again as long as I live. How can I tell that I’m not being fooled? ”

“By me, do you mean? ” asked Valentine.

“By the lot of you! I want to get at the facts. I don’t believe I’ve done that yet You say that it was Evelyn Stainer who came here that Monday, but where’s your evidence? Why did she come? What earthly motive could she have? Tell me that, and I may be able to believe you.”

Valentine began to hesitate. He had not intended to say a word about what to himself was the most important subject in the world. But, in the first place, he was extremely anxious to allay Libnel’s suspicions, which he felt convinced, more firmly than ever, were entirely without justification. In the second place,

Valentine began to think that he should like to hear how the suggestion of Evelyn’s marriage appealed to another mind. After a short silence, accordingly, he told Windermere all that he had heard from Wentworth through Sibylla, and before he had finished Lionel was sitting very erect on one of the easy chairs, gazing up into Valentine’s face in ludicrous astonishment “But, my dear Val,” he said at last, “you’ve found a mare’s nest. As it happens, I saw Evelyn on the afternoon of New Year’s Day. She came to Constable Street—a Stock Exchange holiday, you know, and I was at home. She brought a New Year’s present for the youngster.”

“After all,” cried Valentine, “that wouldn’t have prevented her from being married the morning before. She might have been back in Champion Place by the first of January.”

“Not much of a honeymoon,” returned Lionel. “And why the dickens, if she had become Chalmers’s wife, should she go back there at all? Why should he part from her within a few hours of the wedding day? No, that theory won’t hold water, Val. About the most unlikely I ever heard. There’s only one way to satisfy my mind.”

“What’s that? ” demanded Valentine.

“As I told you before, I’ve got to see Evelyn. Whenever I hint at it, you seem anxious to put me off. But now I’m going to have my own way, whether you like it or not. How 4o I know that she and your friend Miss Knowles haven’t put their heads together to humbug us both? I intend to have it out,” Lionel insisted. “Of course, you’re just the sort of chap to be duped by a woman, but they won’t find it quite so easy to swindle me. I didn’t want to shew my face at Champion Place, but I can’t go on in this way, and that’s really why I’ve cone back so soon.”

CHAPTER XXVI

THE clock had just struck eleven the following morning, and the maid employed by the Parliament Court Company Limited was still occupied in setting Valentine’s bedroom in order, when the electric bell rang.

He had taken out his MSS., removed the top of his fountain pen, and sat down at the writing-table, but although an hour had passed he had not as yet written a word. He heard the maid go to the outer door, heard her close it, then fancied that more than one pair of footsteps were coming along the passage. The sitting-room door opened, and turning a little impatiently he was startled to see Lucilla.

At the outset he was struck by something unusual in her appearance. Her air seemed chastened this morning, and there was a difference in her dress, although he could not tell what She looked quieter—more demure. Remembering Evelyn’s indignation when she parted from him the previous day, Valentine’s first thought was that there had been a quarrel at Champion Place, though he hoped, very ardently, that Lucilla had not come this morning to drag him into it Here she was, however, and it seemed necessary to rise and offer his hand with some show of welcome. When he invited her to sit down, she breathed a deep sigh as she sank wearily, it appeared, into the nearest chair, looking up at him quite pathetically. Never had her dark eyes been more eloquent “Mr. Brook,” she began, “I know I oughtn’t to have come as well as you do. But you— you have always been so good to me that I couldn’t keep away. I feel so utterly wretched, and—and there seemed no one else to turn to.”

Standing on the hearth-rug, Valentine listened with a misgiving which might have been considerably less if it were not for Sibylla’s warning. It was rather alarming to think, as his sister suggested, that Lucilla might be deliberately trying to twist him round her little finger. But if Sibylla’s suggestion made him feel extremely uncomfortable on the one hand, it also tended to make him a little more sympathetic on the other. He hated to do any woman an injustice! Moreover, it was really hard on the girl, granting her sincerity, that in this emergency, as yet unexplained, she should be leaning on a broken reed in the form of himself!

“No one else? ” said Valentine. “Oh, come, it can’t be quite so bad as all that, you know.” “Ah, but you were rather cruel when you gave me away to Miss Stainer yesterday,” murmured Lucilla.

“I didn’t even mention your name! ” he expostulated. “Neither did she.”

“They say a nod is as good as a wink,” said Lucilla. “You told her things which it wasn’t possible you could have heard from anybody else. She came home in the most tearing rage.” “That’s a bit difficult to realize,” answered Valentine, perhaps with greater loyalty than accuracy.

“You haven’t had my opportunities of knowing her,” said Lucilla. “You never really do know what a woman is till you live in the same house.” “I seem to remember,” he urged, “your telling me that you desired nothing better than to go on living in the house—with your Good Fairy, you know.”

“It’s true that I used to feel very, very grateful,” Lucilla admitted. “But you know how it is! When anyone treats you unjustly, you forget all that’s gone before. My last state will be worse, far worse, than my first. The instant she came home yesterday afternoon,” Lucilla continued, “she asked for me. She ran upstairs straight to my room; then she simply flew at me. She vowed she would never forgive me.”

“For what?” demanded Valentine. “What bad you done? ”

“I had only told the truth. I had hesitated and hesitated before I spoke. If I hadn’t felt so unhappy about the Windermeres I should never have admitted it was Miss Stainer who left the silver bag on your shaving - table. But she wouldn’t listen to a word of excuse. She was far too angry. She insisted she would never speak to me again, and I don’t believe she will She even left it to Mrs. Tempest to say I was to leave the house this morning.”

Seeing Lucilla’s lower lip begin ominously to tremble, Valentine took two or three turns about the room, casting apprehensive glances in her direction. Although he was a good deal concerned by the embarrassment of his own position, it was impossible not to feel a certain amount of sympathy as she sat there clasping and unclasping her hands. It seemed a little autocratic to send her away at a few hours’ notice!

“I packed my trunks before I went to bed last night,” she explained, after a short silence, “ and they sent for a taxi soon after breakfast this morning. I was sent up to my own room just as if I were a child in disgrace. I didn’t know what to do or where to go. I changed my mind goodness knows how many times, and at last I told the man to drive me here in desperation.” The appalling suspicion occurred to Valentine that she looked as if she intended to stay. She was in fact, at the present moment, taking off her gloves, while any attempt to hurry her off the premises would seem like hitting her when she was down.

“Why in the world,” he demanded, feeling rather brutal, “didn’t you go to your aunt at Clapham Common? ”

“Because it would be only waste of time,” was the answer. “She would simply refuse to take me in.”

“I thought you told me that her door was to be always open to you! ”

“Ah yes,” said Lucilla, “but that was weeks and weeks ago. Ever so many things have happened since,” she added, with a sigh. “Aunt Hannah is all right, like so many other people, if you let her have her own way. But she can’t bear to be contradicted or proved in the wrong. She expected I should repent having left her to go to Champion Place—”

“She appears to have been wise in her generation,” suggested Valentine. “I suppose you do repent"

Again he saw her lower lip tremble, as she looked up more reproachfully into his face.

“If I had never gone there,” she murmured, “how should I ever have found my way here? I couldn’t help it I was sent I had no choice. I positively hated the errand. How, in my position, was I to refuse? Aunt Hannah thought I should go back almost at once and confess I had been mistaken in going away. Then the old, ghastly life would have begun again. When she learnt that I was really happy and contented, as I was before—before I knew you—”

“Oh, I say! ” cried Valentine. “Isn’t that putting it rather too strongly? ”

Lucilla leaned forward in her chair, resting her elbow on her knee and her chin on her hand.

“Oh well,” she continued, “though I’ve sometimes wondered, I suppose that really, at bottom, it must have been principally my own fault. I ought never to have trusted you.”

“Trusted me!” said Valentine, feeling more uncomfortable every moment.

“I thought I might,” she persisted. “Somehow you looked as if you could be trusted. I had known very few men. When you—when you— treated me as you did that Sunday evening, the last time I was here, how was I to imagine you were serving me as if I were some—some common woman you had picked up in the street! ”

“Upon my soul,” cried Valentine, with his face aglow, “I don’t think that’s quite fair, you know."

“Oh, I wouldn’t be unfair for the world,” she answered. “When I came this morning I didn’t mean to utter a single reproachful word.”

“As you thought so wretchedly of me,” urged Valentine, “I wonder that you did come.”

“So do I! ” she exclaimed, starting to her feet. “But then I’ve never pretended to be consistent I’ve always tried to hope—”

“To hope?” muttered Valentine.

“Yes, I’ve always tried to hope, in spite of anything Mrs. Tempest could say about men and the way they treat girls like me. She was right after all! She always insisted that you were only thinking of your own amusement. I couldn’t believe it, after that Sunday evening here. Even when you began to treat me so differently afterwards at Champion Place, I tried to think everything would come right in the end. On being turned out of the house this morning I felt entirely helpless. When my father died, I went straight from Brighton to Clapham. I have never been quite on my own before. If you turn your back on me as the others have done, I don’t know what will become of me. I don’t care.”

Taking a few square inches of cambric from the leather bag which she carried, she applied it to her eyes, while Valentine, telling himself that whether Sibylla’s theory were right or wrong he was in a very delicate situation, knitted his brows and tried to find a solution to the problem. It seemed to become even more intricate when, drawing closer, she rested a hand on his sleeve.

“Val dear,” she whispered, “please, please do what you can to help me.” He did not fail to notice the use, for the first time, of his Christian name. "I will put myself absolutely in your hands. I will do whatever you like—go wherever you take me.”

The worst of it was that, when she stood close and looked up at him in that way, he could not help feeling lamentably self-conscious. Although it was still perfectly true that there was only one woman in the world for Valentine Brook, he devoutly wished that this other were a thousand miles away for safety.

Gently disengaging his sleeve, he walked to his chair by the writing-table and sat down, leaving her standing on the hearth-rug. It appeared obvious, at least, that something must be done for her. Of course it was possible to make her understand that he was unable to help her even with advice; at least it might have been possible for some men. But, apart from the circumstance that Valentine had a soft heart, he could not help feeling that up to a certain point he was responsible.

If he had refused to enlighten Evelyn as to his method of dealing with Lionel Windermere, her anger would have been provoked neither against himself in the first place nor Lucilla in the second. Lucilla, in fact, would have been still at Champion Place. Valentine, however, had failed to keep his own counsel, with the consequence that she had come to Parliament Court.

While her behaviour during the last half-hour or so might appear to confirm Sibylla’s theory, at the same time that might be entirely mistaken. Lucilla’s demeanour might, surely, be accounted for as well by simplicity as by guile. In any case, the situation remained extremely perplexing.

“You are not in want of money?” asked Valentine abruptly.

“Oh no, of course they were bound to pay me a month’s salary,” was the answer. “It isn’t exactly a question of money, only I feel so lonely —so helpless.”

It was true that he had usually thought she was peculiarly competent to take care of herself, but then he remembered that Mrs. Tempest had insisted that Lucilla was really an inexperienced young woman, who believed she had nothing left to learn. Now that she was, for the first tinte, thrown on her own resources, she seemed inclined to lose her head. The time was passing, however, and something must be done. What in the world could be done?

Swinging round on his chair, at last, Valentine began to put away his MSS. Drawing nearer, she stood slightly behind him, with a hand on his shoulder. The contact seemed to spur him to sudden action, and starting to his feet he left her alone for a few minutes, returning to the sitting-room with his hat and stick.

“If you’re ready, we may as well be getting along,” he exclaimed.

“I have a taxi at the door,” she explained, “with all my worldly goods. They are not very many."

He let her out of the flat, and they went down in the lift together, through the hall, where he had followed Evelyn yesterday afternoon, and across the pavement to the cab. Opening the door, he saw her sit down, then turned to speak to the driver.

“You—you’re coming too? ” she murmured.

“Yes, yes,” said Valentine. “I’m just going to tell the fellow where to take us.”

A moment later he was seated by her side, and they were driven away together.

“I suppose,” cried Valentine, more cheerfully now that his suspense was ended, “I had better explain exactly what I am going to do.”

She edged a little nearer, so that her arm was in touch with his own.

“I haven’t asked,” she murmured. “I wasn’t going to. I have put myself in your hands. I can’t help trusting you perfectly."

“Anyhow, I am going to take you to my sister,” said Valentine.

She drew farther away again, as if to obtain a better view of his face. Looking into hers, he found it impossible to tell whether she experienced gratification or disappointment; and, for his own part, he could not help feeling a little anxious concerning her reception.

Sibylla had assuredly a surprise in store, and he was about to take a, perhaps, rather shabby advantage. She could not very well refuse to receive a visitor, for a few days, in the house for which he was mainly responsible. It was a case of seeking any port in a storm.

Lucilla must, in any event, be disposed of. If she were really as helpless as she insisted, she would be safe at Sycamore Road, and if Sibylla’s suggestions should by any chance be warranted, why, then, Valentine perceived that he would be safer! As, however, they were driven swiftly along Baker Street towards St. John’s Wood, he began to dread the impending introduction.

“What in the world,” demanded Lucilla, after a long silence, “do you imagine Miss Brook will say? ”

“Anyhow,” he insisted, “she will be delighted to put you up and help you to find decent rooms and that sort of thing, you know.”

“You—you are not going to cut me altogether? ” she urged. “You won’t turn me over to your sister entirely? ”

Now Valentine hesitated for a few moments. He was a man who in ordinary affairs sometimes found it difficult to say “No,” and this experience struck him as extraordinary. Still, he took himself firmly in hand; he made an immense effort “To tell you the truth,” he said, “that is exactly what I am going to do. As far as I am concerned I don’t see how I can help you. I am going to put you in Sibylla’s hands and ask her to look after you as well as she can.”

Lucilla leaned back in her corner now, as the taxi-cab turned into Wellington Road. For some time no sound escaped from her lips, then, to Valentine’s astonishment, he heard a short laugh. Curiously enough she looked rather more cheerful, more like herself.

“If you don't mind,” he said, as they were driven along Sycamore Road, “I think it may be as well to leave you in the taxi for a few moments while I prepare Sibylla’s mind.”

“Oh yes, do,” answered Lucilla. “I don’t mind in the least. I dare say it will require a little preparation. I should imagine she would be rather astonished!”

CHAPTER XXVI

SIBYLLA was astonished; very much astonished indeed. Nurse Watson had just finished setting her patient’s room in order, and Mrs. Brook was lying in the middle of a wide bed, with her head propped up by several pillows. Sibylla, who still wore her hat, having recently returned from her usual morning shopping, stood by her mother’s side, explaining that she had met Mr. Wentworth, whom, by the by, she not infrequently saw on her way from the butcher’s to the grocer’s, or the baker’s to the dairyman’s.

Nurse Watson, with a checkered duster in her hand, was looking out of the window, and if anything exciting happened in the street, such as the delivery of a telegram at one of the neighbouring houses, or a fall off a bicycle, she would turn to give a long account of the affair to her patient.

“Dear me! ” she suddenly exclaimed.

“What is it, nurse? ” asked Mrs. Brook, always interested in little things; hence, perhaps, such cheerfulness as she was able to maintain under all her pains.

“A taxi,” was the answer. “Stopping at our gate! There’s a trunk—quite a large trunk— and a leather bag with initials on it, though,” she added, pressing her face against the pane, “I can’t see what they are.”

“Stopping here? ” murmured Mrs. Brook.

“The driver must have made a mistake,” suggested Sibylla.

“No,” cried Nurse Watson. “Mr. Valentine’s getting out”

“He must be going into the country,” said Sibylla, with a sigh, “and he has come to bid us good-bye on the way to the station.”

“There’s some one with him,” exclaimed the nurse, and now she felt genuinely excited. “A young woman! ” she added.

Sibylla came to her side, and Mrs. Brook gripped the counterpane as if to raise herself in bed.

“Is it the one who was here the other day?” she asked, in a feeble voice.

“No, not that one,” was the answer, and then they heard the bell ring. “He’s left her in the taxi,” the nurse continued.

Whereupon Sibylla, unable to control her curiosity any longer, ran swiftly downstairs, reaching the hall just as the maid let Valentine into the house.

“Look here, Sibylla,” he began as soon as they were alone, “I dare say you’ll think I’m doing a rummy sort of thing—”

“Who is that in the taxi? ” demanded Sibylla, in an anxious voice.

“Lucilla Knowles.”

“Oh, Val,” cried Sibylla, “you have never been doing anything foolish? ”

“I was never in such a hobble in my life,” he answered. “She has left Champion Place; she couldn’t go to her aunt; she didn’t know which way to turn, and came to me. I was at my wit’s end, till I made up my mind to bring her to you.”

“You never mean,” murmured Sibylla, “that she’s going to stay here? ”

“Just for a day or two,” he urged. “You’ll have to help me out, Sibylla. After all, you see, she wouldn’t have been stranded if I hadn’t given her away.”

“Of course I will help you,” was the answer; “but what shall I do with her? ’’

“Oh well, as soon as she’s settled down a bit, you must find her a billet somewhere. I can’t keep her waiting any longer,” he added, turning to the door.

“Wait a minute,” Sibylla entreated. “Val, you’re not going to leave us alone—you must stay to lunch, anyhow.”

“No, no,” he answered. “You’ll get to know one another much better without me.”

“But I really don’t want to get to know her! ” “That will be quite all right,” he insisted. “ I’ll look you up sometime to-morrow and see how you’re getting along.”

“I feel certain we shan’t get along in the least,” said Sibylla, with a sigh.

“Well, I’ll bring her in,” he exclaimed. “Then I musn’t lose a moment. Look here, Sibylla, I’m off to Champion Place at once. I can’t rest till I’ve seen Evelyn, and I swear that nothing on earth shall prevent me from asking her a straight question this time.”

Sibylla could not think of Evelyn at present, however. Although, on the whole, she was inclined to admit that Valentine had taken the most judicious course in bringing Miss Knowles to Sycamore Road, she was appalled at the prospect of entertaining such an uncongenial guest But Valentine was already in the hall, opening the door, and the next moment she looked out at the window to see him hastening along the garden path to fetch Lucilla.

CHAPTER XXVIII

AND now for Evelyn. Valentine’s intention on leaving Sycamore Road was to make his way immediately to Cham pion Place without waiting for luncheon. He left the house at St John’s Wood with a sense of intense relief. He had introduced Lucilla to his sister, and in doing so felt that he was putting aside his last responsibility. But, by the time he was half-way to Mrs. Tempest’s, he realized that he might find Evelyn in the middle of her meal, and leaning out of the taxi he directed the driver to his club.

Valentine Brook had never been in a more determined mood. Whatever the future might have in store, he intended to learn whether Evelyn was Derrick’s wife or not before he left her presence. In the end he approached Champion Place more apprehensively than he had ever done before. After the manner of her departure from Parliament Court the previous afternoon, it was impossible to feel very confident concerning his reception to-day. He could not even yet make up his mind whether her indignation had been due to a false statement or to his discovery of the truth.

At least he could not be suspected of coming to see Lucilla, and when he asked for “Miss Stainer,” the butler took him to the drawing-room, where as the door opened Valentine caught a glimpse of her, leaning back pensively in an easy chair, apparently lost in some not entirely agreeable day-dream. She did not turn her head till his name was announced, then, instantly on her feet, she came swiftly to meet him with her hand outstretched.

For whatsoever reason, Valentine could scarcely question her pleasure at seeing him, and in fact from the first moment he became aware of some subtle difference in her demeanour.

“I was just thinking,” she said, “that I owed you some sort of—of apology. I reaHy don’t very often lose my temper, but yesterday was certainly an unfortunate exception, and you, poor man, had to pay the penalty.”

“I wonder,” answered Valentine, as she withdrew her hand and returned to her chair, “whether you realise how heavy it was. I scarcely dared to show my face to-day. Yet, since you left me without deigning even to say good-bye, I couldn’t rest till I saw you again,

By the by,” he added, “I am not the only one to be penalised. Lucilla turned up at my place this morning.”

“Of course,” said Evelyn, with the slightest of frowns. “That is a habit of hers, isn’t it? Frankly,” Evelyn continued, “I shall not enter into any explanation about Lucilla. Still, I don’t mind admitting a certain curiosity to hear what she said to you.”

“Oh well,” he explained rather impatiently, “it appears that you tackled her directly you reached home yesterday. You overwhelmed her with reproaches.”

“What for? ” demanded Evelyn.

“For telling me that it was you who left the silver bag at Parliament Court. You vowed,” said Valentine, “never to ^speak to her again, and you sent her away at a few hours’ notice."

“Did you find it,” murmured Evelyn, “easy to believe I was capable of turning another woman adrift in that way?”

“Then you didn’t? ” cried Valentine.

“I was forgetting my self-denying ordinance,” said Evelyn. “It’s rather difficult to hold one’s tongue now and then.”

“Don’t you really think,” urged Valentine, standing with his hand on the back of her chair,

“that it’s often a wasted effort? Haven’t we done almost enough in that way? Couldn’t we make this the beginning of a new order of things? ”

“I am not sure I should very much object,” said Evelyn, in little above a whisper.

Although he was afraid to assume too much, it appeared certain that a new epoch had already, in a manner, begun. She was obviously putting him altogether on a far more friendly footing, nor could Valentine understand what had happened to bring this delightful change to pass.

He was evidently forgiven for his rash statement of yesterday, and the improvement followed so closely on Lucilla’s departure from Champion Place that it seemed almost there must be some mysterious connection between the two occurrences. Yet it was difficult to understand why a quarrel with Lucilla should make Evelyn so much more friendly towards himself.

“Then, if you have no objection,” he urged, “this is the time to make a clean breast of everything.”

"Not at all,” she tantalisingly returned. “I am in a mood to listen. So Lucilla told you I had turned her out! What then? Is she still at Parliament Court? ”

“At Sycamore Road,” Valentine explained.

“I thought the best thing was to take her t6 Sibylla.”

“On the whole,” cried Evelyn, with a satisfied smile, “you seem to have acted quite discreetly. I suppose you have come to reproach me for the hardness of my heart? ”

“I hope sincerely,” he answered, bending over her shoulder, “that it won’t be necessary. As a matter of fact, I’m here to clear up the whole situation. I can’t help suspecting,” Valentine added, “that what took place between you and Lucilla yesterday had more importance than I imagined.”

Evelyn lowered her eyes for a moment “Y—es,” she answered, after a rather long silence. " I think it really was important. Very important indeed.” She raised her eyes again, and he had never seen such a perplexing expression in them before. “I am not certain,” she murmured, “that it was not the most important quarter of an hour I ever experienced.”

“You’re not going to be more explicit?” he asked.

“Not—not at present”

“Anyhow,” he insisted, “it seems to be the beginning of a better regime, you know.”

“How is that? ” she demanded.

“Oh well, it’s almost as if you began to treat me—more decently the moment you knew that Lucilla had let the cat out of the bag, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“I don’t mind in the least,” she returned. “But how about yesterday afternoon? Is that your ideal of decent treatment? ”

“The astounding improvement dates more positively from to-day,” he said. “Still, that scarcely affects what I said. You may not have been quite convinced how far Lucilla had gone until you came face to face with her on your return. Although,” Valentine continued, “even yesterday I thought the barometer showed a tendency to rise until I managed to put my foot into it—”

He became abruptly silent, not so much because of her rather intent gaze as for the reason that the next few moments would probably make or mar his future. It is true that already, before Evelyn was actually brought to the point, his mind was almost made up. In the face of the treatment she was meting out to him this afternoon, it was scarcely conceivable that he ought to regard her as forbidden fruit.

“Until I managed to put my foot into it,” he repeated, “by suggesting you were married—”

“Oh, but, if you please,” she retorted, with a touch of peremptoriness, “we will not go back to that There’s a degree of absurdity which is really intolerable.”

“Then it is absurd to suggest such a thing? ” he exclaimed eagerly.

“If you haven’t grasped the fact,” she murmured, “I am afraid I must give you up as hopeless.”

“That,” he urged excitedly, “is the one thing in the world you must never dream of doing.”

“What? ” asked Evelyn.

“You must never for an instant talk of giving me up.”

“I have told you I don’t wish to talk about anything,” she replied. “I much prefer to listen.”

“Still, that’s a little one-sided,” he insisted. “And, after all, it will be inevitable to answer some day.”

“Oh well, some day, perhaps,” she said. “But not this afternoon. I don’t know what has become of Henrietta,” she added.

“Is that a hint for me to go? ” asked Valentine.

“Going really doesn’t matter very much,” returned Evelyn, “when one can come again as—as soon as one pleases.”

“There is still something on my mind,” he suggested.

“I should have thought,” cried Evelyn, with a laugh, “that, if—if you have not been misinterpreted, your mind ought by this time to be entirely unburdened.”

“Ah yes," he answered, “I am beginning to feel pretty well light-headed. But Lionel Windermere is once more plunged into an abyss of doubt He couldn’t stay at Brighton. He turned up at Parliament Court last night with all his suspicions alive again. He insists there was collusion between you and Lucilla—”

“At least,” said Evelyn, “you can easily disillusion him on that score."

“Just what it’s impossible to do,” Valentine persisted. “Only one person in the world can do that He declares he will tackle you before he is many hours older. I wonder you have not had a visit from him before this.”

“Oh, I have,” was the answer. “He was here quite early this morning. I refused to see him—”

“And consequently made him more suspicious than ever! ” suggested Valentine. “Do you know when Margaret will be home? ” he added.

“Not for certain. But I don’t think she is likely to be away longer than another day or two,” said Evelyn.

“As soon as she’s back, look out for squalls,” exclaimed Valentine. “If Lionel doesn’t succeed in seeing you, he is pretty certain to accuse her. He will rush at it like a bull at a gate, and then Margaret may rebel as she did before.”

A few moments later Valentine said good-bye in the highest spirits, notwithstanding his concern for the Windermeres, and as he made his way downstairs he marvelled how he could ever have been idiotic enough to torment himself by the notion that Evelyn was married, or ever could be married to any man but himself.

The butler opened the street door as he reached the hall, and he was on the point of leaving the house when Mrs. Tempest came forth from the dining-room.

“Mr. Brook,” she exclaimed, “I wish you would spare me a few moments.”

CHAPTER XXIX

VALENTINE had never until now been inside the dining-room at Champion Place. The first thing which struck him was that a complete blue and white dinner service seemed to be displayed on various shelves and brackets about the walls. There were several portraits also: some of Henrietta’s ancestors, some of Evelyn’s, amongst these being the late Dean of Chesterborough, the upper portion of whose face bore a remarkable likeness to his daughter’s.

“Now what,” demanded Henrietta, sitting with her back to the windows, while Valentine was leaning against the table, looking down at the fire, “has Evelyn been telling you? ’’

“Oh, all manner of things I ” he answered. “Agreeable things to judge by your countenance! But, about Lucilla Knowles, for instance? ” “She refused to say a word,” exclaimed Valentine. “I was telling her that Lucilla paid me a visit this morning, and said she had been turned out”

“No, no,” said Henrietta. “It’s true I hinted that she would have to go sooner or later, but I implored her to stay till I succeeded in finding her another situation. She elected to go this morning; and perhaps she was right—she could scarcely have failed to find the house intolerable after what had happened.”

“What had happened? ” suggested Valentine. “You see, Evelyn seemed unwilling to stoop to say a word in her own defence, as it were.”

“I was inclined to think she would take that line,” was the answer. “But, anyhow, I mean you to know the facts. I understand that Lucilla insisted that the silver bag about which all this trouble has arisen belonged to Evelyn.”

“And,” said Valentine, “that it was left at the flat by its owner.”

“Of course that is utterly false,” cried Henrietta. “Evelyn had never entered Parliament Court till she went to see you yesterday afternoon.”

Mrs. Tempest’s statement, of course, put Lucilla’s conduct quite on a different footing. Hitherto Valentine had assumed that her fault lay simply in letting out the truth; but, according to Henrietta, she had concocted a peculiarly atrocious lie, as, indeed, Sibylla had already suggested.

Even now, however, Valentine was eager to believe that Lucilla was being too harshly judged.

“Are you sure,” he urged, “that there is no possibility of a mistake? ”

“How can there be? ” Henrietta demanded. “Anyhow,” Valentine persisted, “there is one way to convince even Windermere, and only one.” “What is that?”

“By stating who Derrick’s visitor actually was,” said Valentine.

“As things have taken this turn, thanks to Lucilla,” answered Henrietta, “I think it is due to Evelyn that you should know she was not at the flat. I am in a position to be certain,” she added, as the colour mounted to her temples, “because—because I was.”

“You! ” exclaimed Valentine, startled completely out of his self-possession.

“Yes, I was there,” she repeated. “Why should that astound you? ” she demanded. “Why should a visit from me be more remarkable than one from Evelyn? ”

He could not very well explain that she appeared the last person in the world to be suspected of an assignation of the kind. At least he felt that he had touched bottom at last She was not the woman to make such an admission lightly. That Mrs. Tempest had been Derrick’s visitor Valentine could not for an instant doubt, the only remaining question being whether she was also Derrick’s wife. Having said what she wished to say, however, she was obviously eager for Valentine to go, nor could he bring himself to add to her quite distressful embarrassment. In fact, he felt almost as certain as if he had been told, and still waters, evidently, ran deep.

If Lucilla had not been at Sycamore Road, Valentine would probably have gone to confide his latest discovery to Sibylla the same afternoon, but, as things were, he postponed the journey till the morrow.

It was unusual for him to take that direction in the morning, but for one reason he found it impossible to attempt to work, and for another it appeared just as well to let his sister know the kind of woman Miss Knowles had proved really to be.

“Then, of course,” exclaimed Sibylla, as soon as she heard of Henrietta’s admission, “it is Mrs. Tempest who is Derrick's wife after all.”

“In that case,” suggested Valentine, “she must have married the fellow within a week or two of Tempest’s death! ”

“That,” Sibylla insisted, “supplies the explanation. Now, the whole thing seems perfectly clear. There can’t be much mystery about Lucilla’s motive, either. I am sorry,” Sibylla continued, with a sigh. “For the first half-hour after you went away yesterday I felt most horribly embarrassed. But she began to seem at home more quickly than you would imagine. Of course I was bound to take her to see Mother, and from that time she has spent most of her time upstairs. You know that I started with a prejudice, Val—and what you have just told me isn’t very creditable—still, I don’t know how it is, I can’t altogether dislike the girl and I don’t mean to lose sight of her,” said Sibylla.

As she was speaking Lucilla entered the room.

“Oh,” she murmured, coming to a standstill with her fingers on the door-handle, “I had no idea you were here. The nurse,” she explained, turning to Sibylla, “sent me away. She thought Mrs. Brook had had enough of me for one morning.” Then Lucilla remained silent for a moment before turning to Valentine. “I—I suppose you have seen Miss Stainer since you were here last? ” she asked.

“I saw her yesterday afternoon,” was the answer.

Whereupon Lucilla looked at him curiously, half smiling at first, then quite gravely, until she turned to the window. She must know that she stood convicted in his eyes, and he did not expect that she would take any further notice of him before he left the house.

“I have not,” she said, however, “thanked you for bringing me here and quite overwhelming Miss Brook. I know I must be tremendously in the way, though she makes a superhuman effort to make me believe I’m not Anyhow,” she continued, “I should love to stay just one more night—”

“First we must find somewhere else for you to go,” suggested Sibylla.

“Oh, there won’t be much difficulty about that,” said Lucilla, and stopped abruptly, raising her eyebrows with a rather deprecatory expression as she looked at Valentine.

To him, it seemed as if she were throwing off some disguise for the first time since he had known her. He could not help giving her credit, at least, for a certain amount of courage, in what was really her moment of defeat

CHAPTER XXX

NOW that Valentine’s own hopes ran riot, it is probable that he flattered himself that he was going to have his own way in every other regard—with Lionel Windermere, for instance. It was true that he would find it necessary to eat his own words, having insisted that it was Evelyn who left the silver bag in Parliament Court, whereas it would now be essential to turn the responsibility over to Mrs. Tempest.

So impatient did Valentine feel to settle Lionel’s doubts once and for all, before Margaret’s return from Torquay, that he rang up the office in Threadneedle Street, insisting that Windermere should not on any account fail to look in at the flat on his way to Constable Street It was obvious at a glance that Lionel was in an unusually bad temper, although Valentine felt confident of speedily working an improvement. The fact was, as he vehemently complained, that he had paid three visits to Champion Place with out succeeding in seeing Evelyn. On the last occasion, on his way to the City this morning, he had asked in desperation for Mrs. Tempest, who, also, was said to be “Not at home.”

“Anyhow,” answered Valentine, “I saw her yesterday, and I’m going to pass on what she told me. You won’t have the slightest need to go out of your way again. We’ve got to the bottom of the mystery at last.”

“I thought,” said Lionel ungraciously, “you insisted you had got to the bottom of it before, though of course I knew you were talking through your hat”

“I thought so too,” Valentine admitted. “But this time I have heard a plain, straightforward confession.”

“Whom from, in Heaven’s name? ” demanded Lionel.

“Why, from Mrs. Tempest”

“What did she say? ”

“She admitted without the least reservation that it was she herself who came to see Derrick—”

“But Miss Knowles told you it was Evelyn! ” shouted Lionel.

“Yes, I know,” said Valentine. “She told a lie.”

“So did Mrs. Tempest,” answered Lionel “It was neither of them. Those three interfering women are banded together to make a fool of me. They’re afraid to look me in the face. It’s a case of barefaced collusion. I tell you that the silver bag was Maigaret’s. And it was she who left it on your shaving-table.”

“But, my dear fellow,” urged Valentine, “can you imagine that any woman in the world would own up to such a thing unless it were true? ”

“Why didn’t Mrs. Tempest own up before?” cried Lionel.

“She wouldn’t have done so now if she hadn’t wanted to clear Evelyn. You remember,” Valentine continued, “what I told you about Derrick’s marriage. I haven’t the slightest shadow of a doubt that Mrs. Tempest is his wife. Her first husband died sometime during December, and she simply felt ashamed to let anyone know she had married again in such tremendous haste. There you have the whole truth in a nutshell.”

“A devilish ingenious untruth! ” answered Windermere warmly. “Now, suppose you listen to my version up to date. Margaret would have bolted with Chalmers if it had not been for his mother’s telegram. In the face of that she turned to Lydia, but Evelyn induced her to come back to Constable Street After she reached the house, she missed the bag, and entreated Evelyn to get it back from this flat You gave away the show,” Lionel continued, “when you told me about Miss Knowles. At first Evelyn had no idea that I was in the know. Margaret, herself, has no suspicion till this minute. To shield her, Evelyn, like the good sport she is, took the blame on herself. With the help of Miss Knowles she succeeded in humbugging you, but she knew I shouldn’t be quite so easily fooled. Well, what does she do? ” demanded Lionel. “As soon as she learns that I mean to tackle her, she shows the white feather. She appeals to Mrs. Tempest, who tries to cross the scent by pretending in turn the confounded bag was hers. Don’t you see that if I had wanted fresh evidence Mrs. Tempest has furnished it. I don’t believe for an instant she was ever in this room,” Lionel insisted, “or that she was the sort of woman to marry again within a week or so of Tempest’s death. Besides, she wouldn’t marry Chalmers in any case. He wouldn’t make the least appeal to her.”

“How do you explain Lucilla’s hurried departure from Champion Place? ” suggested Valentine.

“The Lord knows! That’s a side issue. It has no earthly interest for me. I expect Margaret home the day after to-morrow,” said Lionel, “and as Evelyn refuses to see me I will turn to my wife. I will hear what she has to say for herself.”

CHAPTER XXXI

“I HAVE been positively longing to see you,”

I exclaimed Evelyn when Valentine entered her presence on the afternoon after his disappointing conversation with Lionel Winder-mere.

“I wouldn’t keep you waiting for the world,” was the answer.

“But, seriously !” said Evelyn, settling down comfortably in the middle of her cushion.

“The more seriously, the better.”

“I feel immensely angry with Henrietta,” Evelyn insisted. “I hear she waylaid you in the hall on your way out of the house yesterday.”

“Upon my word,” cried Lionel, with a laugh, “Mrs. Tempest gave me the surprise of my life.”

“I really don’t see,” retorted Evelyn, “why it should astonish you to hear she had done something which in me you could take for granted.”

“You,” he said, “stand in a class by yourself, you know. I confess that I left Mrs. Tempest entirely out of my reckoning. But now,” Valentine added, “naturally I am able to carry her adventures a step farther.”

“What I am longing to hear,” suggested Evelyn, “is whether you have seen Mr. Winder-mere.”

“Yesterday afternoon,” returned Valentine.

“Of course, you told him what you had heard from Henrietta. It is your foible to repeat things, especially to him.”

“Anyhow,” said Valentine, “I felt bound to explain that it was, after all, Mrs. Tempest’s bag which had caused his heart-burnings.”

“Oh, but—”

“Good Lord,” cried Valentine promptly, “you’re not going to tell me it wasn’t at this time of day! ”

“You told Mr. Windermere,” she insisted, “that Henrietta was Derrick’s visitor?”

“Yes,” was the answer.

“What did he say to that?” asked Evelyn, looking a little anxious.

“Frankly, he insisted it was—well, a lie. He declared there had been a deliberate attempt to beguile him: first by you and Lucilla, afterwards, at the eleventh hour, by Mrs. Tempest."

“How provoking the man can be i ” exclaimed Evelyn. “Then you don’t think he is any more disposed to believe in Margaret’s perfect innocence than he was before? ”

“A good deal less,” said Valentine. “He is simply more suspicious than ever.”

“What a pity it seems! ” murmured Evelyn. “Such a little would enable those two to get along comfortably together. Such a little, too, might separate them for ever.”

“They must be precious uncomfortable at present,” said Valentine; “living under the same roof, the one constantly watching the other. With all his doubts Lionel insists that he has never uttered a word to open her eyes, though as far as I can make out that’s what he means to do as soon as she comes back from Torquay.” As Evelyn sat with a portentously solemn face, Valentine did not know whether he admired her more in this mood or her usual vivacious one. He told himself that she had an ever varying but never diminishing charm, but at the same time wished she would tell him what was on her mind. It appeared, indeed, that she was hesitating whether to speak out or not, and at least he grew more and more confident that there still remained something to be explained.

“Would you mind,” she cried presently, “going to the secretaire and bringing me a telegraph form?”

Walking to the farther window, he brought the form and the blotting-pad.

“I think you will see a pencil,” Evelyn added. Whereupon Valentine rested the pad on her knees; and for the next few minutes she sat with the end of the pencil between her lips. “I think I will send it!” she cried, as if she were still in doubt.

“Whom to? ” he inquired.

“Why, to Derrick, of course,” she returned. “I don’t know whether I ought really to consult Henrietta; but no,” she murmured thoughtfully, “I don’t think I will.”

The composition of the message occupied some time, and she turned abruptly to ask how many “m’s” there were in “immediately.” Valentine came to the conclusion that the telegram would cost several shillings, before she drew a deep sigh as if the trying task were at last ended.

“Would you mind ringing? ” she exclaimed; and when the butler entered the room she held out the telegram, insisting that it should be sent to the post office without an instant’s delay.

“Have you asked Derrick to come? ” said Valentine, when Jenkinson had gone.

“Yes,” she replied. “The only question is whether Mrs. Chalmers will let him. She seems to be a rather exacting old lady.”

“What,” demanded Valentine, “do you imagine he will be able to do? ”

“I hope most sincerely,” cried Evelyn, "he will succeed in satisfying Mr. Windermere’s mind before he has time to say a word to Margaret”

“Meanwhile, aren’t you going to satisfy mine? ” urged Valentine.

But Evelyn slowly shook her head.

" It will come so much better from Derrick,” she insisted. "Though there will be a race against time.”

“Margaret,” said Valentine, “is expected home to-morrow.”

“How I hope,” answered Evelyn, “that she won’t arrive till the afternoon and that Derrick will reach London in the morning! ”

"But if you tell me, whatever there remains to be told,” suggested Valentine, " I could see Lionel at once.”

"He would no more believe you than he has done already,” exclaimed Evelyn. “When he hears the whole story from Derrick’s lips, that will make all the difference in the world.”

CHAPTER XXXII

“MISS BROOK,” exclaimed Lucilla, at half-past ten the same evening, “you have been extraordinarily good to me, and I shouldn’t mind how long I stayed here.”

“I am not in the least hurry to get rid of you,” said Sibylla, truthfully enough.

Since her visitor’s arrival, she had spared no effort to win her confidence, encouraging Lucilla to talk about her former home at Brighton, her mother, and her aunt at Clapham Common. Sibylla had formed the opinion that Lucilla might easily go further astray than she seemed to have done already if there were no judicious friend to keep in touch with her. For her own part, she was willing, even anxious, to do what she could, and Lucilla was welcome to her hospitality until some situation could be found.

“I have made up my mind to relieve you of my presence to-morrow, anyhow,” returned Lucilla. “I am going early in the morning.”

“Going where? ” asked Sibylla.

“To my Aunt Hannah’s. I have nowhere else.”

“I understood,” suggested Sibylla, “that she had refused to receive you.”

“Oh yes, of course, that was what I told Mr. Brook,” was the answer.

“Why did you tell him if it was not true? ”

“I imagine you know as well as I do,” said Lucilla, with the faintest of smiles. “What is the use of pretending you don't? I’m afraid I have treated him rather badly,” she continued. “I wonder whether you would consider it any excuse that I was abominably treated myself. I was engaged to be married, and I put all my eggs in one basket I thought of nothing else. I had no other object in life. My trust was unlimited. The wedding day had been roughly fixed. It was to be in a month or five weeks’ time. Before then my father died—he drank himself to death. It was his manner,” cried Lucilla bitterly, “of showing his grief for my mother. He was heavily in debt I had nothing but the things I stood upright in— nothing.”

“You don’t mean,” suggested Sibylla, “that you were thrown over? ”

“Ah, it seemed utterly inconceivable. He was my second self. I thought he had not a secret from me in the world; that I could read every thought that passed in his mind. He lived in London,” Lucilla explained. “He used to come to see me every other week; we wrote every day. It seemed that we laid our hearts bare to one another. For my part, I hadn’t a single thought which he didn’t share—not one. When I was left alone, I expected that we should be married even sooner than we had arranged, but the day after my father’s funeral I knew we were never to be married at all. He stood at my side by the grave, and said afterwards that he was bound to hurry back to London that night The letter was posted on his way to the station. I am not sure it wasn’t written even before he took me in his arms and said good-bye. It was just a question of money—nothing else. He had believed I should bring him a few hundreds a year. He said that he could not marry me without them.”

Lucilla sat silently gazing at the dying fire for a few minutes, then she turned to Sibylla again.

“I went to Aunt Hannah’s,” she continued, “but you can’t imagine what life there was like. Oh, she was kind enough, in her way, only all the pleasant things in the world were supposed to be wicked. I tried to find something to do, but before I could succeed I met Miss Stainer. I was happy at Champion Place—as happy as I could be anywhere—till the day I was sent to fetch the silver bag from Parliament Court I met your brother, and I knew I must have made a favourable impression on him or he would never have changed his mind and given it to me. Of course, you’ll detest me more than you do already—”

“No, no,” said Sibylla gently, “I don’t detest you. I feel very, very sorry for you.”

“I am not sure that isn’t worse,” cried Lucilla, with the shadow of a smile. “I don’t want pity. I want to live. I want to forget, and I—I can’t Anyhow,” Lucilla continued, “open confession is good for the soul. I made my plans after I got back to Champion Place that Wednesday. I knew, of course, that Mr. Brook must be making a heap of money out of his plays, and I flattered myself I could do what I liked with him.”

“You made up your mind to marry him?” suggested Sibylla.

“I wish I could make you understand how I really felt,” said Lucilla.

“At all events,” was the answer, “I assume you didn’t feel a spark of-—of love for Valentine!”

Lucilla shook her head.

“All that sort of thing was done with as far as I was concerned,” she admitted. “But, if I couldn’t get what I wanted the most, I told myself there were still heaps of other things worth having: things which money could buy. As for Mr. Brook, I simply thought of him as a kind of Universal Provider. I believed I could make him marry me and so get rid of my troubles— all but the one I shall never get rid of. When Mrs. Tempest sent for him and he came to her house, I felt more confident than ever of having my own way. And,” Lucilla hesitated, “I should if it had not been for Miss Stainer. Unfortunately she spoilt my plans.”

“Unfortunately—you say that even now,” murmured Sibylla reproachfully.

“I am telling the truth for once,” exclaimed Lucilla. “I might have hated it in some ways, but I should have gained a good deal in others. I’m not certain it would have been unfortunate even for him. I dare say we should have rubbed along as married people seem to do. I should have made him happy enough. But she drew him away, and I wasn’t going to give in without an effort. Of course I lied about her. I could think of no other way of putting him off, and I— well, I made a mess of it I didn’t admit I was beaten,” Lucilla admitted, “till we were on the way here in the taxi. When he let me in at Parliament Court the other morning, I still thought I stood to win. But when he said he meant to hand me over to you, why, then, I saw the game was played out. I don’t quite know why I’m giving myself away,” said Lucilla. “Perhaps I shouldn’t if I hadn’t the idea that you’d seen through me already. I wonder whether you had?”

“I think so,” Sibylla answered. “I could never feel perfectly certain. But I hope," she added, “that is not your real reason for telling me.”

“What other could there be? ” demanded Lucilla.

“Remorse. A desire to make your confession and a fresh beginning.”

“N—o,” was the answer. “If I’m chastened, it’s simply because [I’m beaten. It may be a form of repentance—I don’t know,” she added, rather wistfully. “I used not to be like this. It doesn’t seem so very long ago since we were all living so happily and ordinarily at Brighton. I could no more have imagined myself acting as I have done than you could imagine yourself doing it to-night.”

“You must understand one thing,” Sibylla insisted. “We are not to lose sight of one another in the future. Clapham Common is not very far, and when you feel bored to death you must come here and we will see whether we can’t find some little thing by way of a change.”

“It’s immensely good of you,” said Lucilla, “but really it’s not the least little bit of use, you know. You and I are as different as chalk from cheese. My great regret,” she continued, “is that I ever saw that silver bag. If it had not been for that I might have stayed on at Champion Place for goodness knows how long.”

“I may as well tell you one thing,” answered Sibylla. “We know who was the real owner of the bag at last.”

“Who?” demanded Lucilla.

“Mrs. Tempest,” said Sibylla.

Lucilla’s astonishment was obviously unfeigned.

“What in the world made you imagine that? ” she exclaimed.

“I have the best possible authority. Her own,” returned Sibylla.

“You don’t know Mrs. Tempest?” suggested Lucilla.

“No, but she told my brother.”

“Do you mean to say,” cried Lucilla, “that Mrs. Tempest told Mr. Brook she left the bag on his shaving-table? ”

“Certainly she told him.”

“All I can say is,” said Lucilla, “that she told him what was not true. I don't believe for an instant that Mrs. Tempest has ever entered Parliament Court Anyhow, she had nothing on earth to do with the silver bag.”

“Then whom did it belong to?” demanded Sibylla.

But Lucilla appeared to hesitate.

“I really think,” urged Sibylla, overcome by curiosity, “that the kindest thing you can do is to tell me—if you know.”

“Yes,” said Lucilla, “I certainly know.”

“Whose was it? ” Sibylla insisted.

“Of course, it was Mrs. Windermere’s. When I reached Parliament Court even the third time I had no idea whom it belonged to,” Lucilla explained. “Miss Stainer seemed determined not to tell me."

“Then how can you speak so positively? How do you know it was Mrs. Windermere’s? ” cried Sibylla.

“Oh well,” said Lucilla, colouring slightly, “to tell you the truth, I opened it. I couldn’t resist the temptation. I opened it on the way back to Champion Place. There was a card-case inside, and I stopped beneath one of the electric lights in Buckingham Palace Road to read the name and address. It was Mrs. Windermere, 15 Constable Street, Mayfair."

CHAPTER XXXIII

IT was the following afternoon, and the sun was shining in at the windows of Valentine’s sitting-room. He had not heard from Sibylla since she listened to Lucilla Knowles’s astounding explanation of the previous evening, although his sister was looking forward eagerly to see him.

Meanwhile, at a little before half-past three, Valentine was pacing the floor with impatient eyes on the clock. On the writing-table stood a new top-hat with a pair of pale grey gloves— equally new—lying across the brim. He wore a black morning coat, in which he did not feel so comfortable as in his customary tweed jacket, and his dark trousers were carefully creased. Every now and then he stopped before the looking-glass to make certain that his tie was precisely in the right place. Valentine was, in fact, waiting for the hour, or rather the half-hour, to strike.

He did not consider that he could suitably present himself in Champion Place earlier than a quarter to four, but he was determined not to arrive a moment later. Events appeared to have followed one another swiftly during the last few days. Before he slept to-night, he was intent on putting his fate to the touch, and a few minutes more would see him on his way.

“Oh, hang!” he suddenly exclaimed, as the bell rang.

His first impulse was to let it ring. He would take no notice. Any kind of delay, now that he was on the point of setting forth on this most important errand of his life, appeared intolerable. If he did not go to the door, the visitor, whoever he might be, would assume that he was not at home and go away.

A second ring!

Thrusting his hands in his trousers pockets, Valentine scowled. There was a dogged expression on his face as he stood on the hearthrug; and after a short period of perfect silence he hoped the fellow had given it up as a bad job.

Just as Valentine was congratulating himself, the bell began a third time, but now it did not cease ringing. The visitor was showing inconvenient persistence. He was no doubt standing with his finger on the button. In Valentine’s highly-strung nervous condition, the continuous ringing had a peculiarly irritating effect Instead of wishing to ignore the visitor, he became possessed by a desire to deal with him promptly and effectually. He supposed that he would have to go to the door.

If the hour had been a little later he would have expected Lionel Windermere, but it was too early for Lionel to be on his way home from the City; moreover, he was counting on Margaret’s return from Torquay.

The Windermeres had been much in Valentine’s mind since the previous day. In spite of Mrs. Tempest’s admission that she had been Derrick Chalmers’s visitor on Monday, the twentieth of February, there must be still room for a further explanation.

Evelyn had sent for Derrick from Eastbourne, and confessed to her anxiety that he should reach London before Lionel saw his wife. Could it be Derrick whose finger was still pressing that confounded bell-button!

On reaching the passage, Valentine suddenly stopped, turned back into the room, put on his hat, and took his gloves and stick in his hand. In the event of finding a casual visitor at the door, these appurtenances would serve as a hint that Valentine was going out The next moment however, he stood face to face with Lionel Windermere, and in all Valentine’s experience he had never seen any man look quite so wretched.

" What on earth’s the matter? ” he demanded.

Without an answer, Lionel walked to the sitting-room, and standing in the middle of it, Rung out his arms with a hopeless, helpless gesture.

“Val, I’ve left my wife!” he exclaimed, and sinking backwards into the nearest chair leaned forward, covering his flushed face with his hands.

Valentine felt afraid the man was weeping.

“Oh, come, old fellow,” he said, with a hand on Lionel’s shoulder, “it can’t be so bad as all that.”

“By Heaven,” muttered Lionel, “it couldn’t conceivably be worse.”

“Look here, let me give you a whisky-and-soda,” suggested Valentine, taking a step towards the sideboard. He could not think of any other form of consolation at the moment “No, no, don’t tempt me,” answered Lionel, raising a haggard face. “I’ve had too much of that as it is. I’ve been kicking my heels at home the whole blessed morning. I knew Margaret was coming soon after lunch. I put off going to the City. I couldn’t stick it any longer. I vowed I would go thoroughly into things; that I would implore her to tell me how she spent those wretched two hours and a half after she left home that afternoon. I took myself in hand,” he continued, Valentine thinking it wiser to refrain from interruption. “I swore I’d set about it cautiously and not lose my temper. You know, I’m always pretty good at that sort of thing, Val. But I swore I wouldn’t this time, and I spent an hour or so with the youngster to get myself into trim, you understand. It wasn’t the least scrap of good,” said Lionel. “Not that it would have made any difference as things turned out.”

“Good Lord! ” cried Valentine anxiously. “How did they turn out?”

“Just as I told you they were bound to do; just as I knew they must from the first time I heard the silver bag had been left here. I admit I lost my head again,” said Lionel ruefully. “ Upon my soul, I thought I should keep cool this time. I meant to tackle Margaret quietly, in a friendly sort of way, you know, but somehow the sight of her made me mad.”

“I seem to remember,” suggested Valentine, in a low voice, “a time when the sight of Margaret used to do the same thing in a rather different way.”

“Ah, Val,” cried Lionel, “who would have thought in those days we should ever come to this! You remember our wedding. Mind you, even when we were engaged, I never felt quite satisfied about Chalmers. I always suspected there had been a good deal more between him and Margaret than anybody imagined. But,” Lionel continued, “I tried to persuade myself it might be a morbid fancy—”

“Exactly the fact,” Valentine interrupted.

“I know,” said Lionel, “I’ve always had a wretched tendency to that sort of thing. Anyhow, I meant to go gently to work this afternoon. But there was Margaret, beautiful, smiling, pleased to see me, so you might have thought I couldn’t help reminding myself she had been able to turn to Chalmers, and that if it hadn’t been for his mother’s telegram she would in all probability have been with him at that moment—”

“My dear fellow,” Valentine expostulated, “you are talking the most complete rot Haven’t I told you that Derrick was married on the last day of December!”

“Oh yes,” retorted Lionel, “you told me.”

“Don’t you believe it? ” demanded Valentine. “It doesn’t make an atom of difference,” Lionel insisted. “Whether Chalmers was married or single doesn’t matter a hang. It was my wife who came here that afternoon.'” “Nothing of the kind,” exclaimed Valentine. “It was Mrs. Tempest, or, as I’ve not the slightest doubt she ought to be called, Mrs. Derrick Chalmers.”

“I don’t care what Mrs. Tempest ought to be called,” said Lionel excitedly. “I don’t care where she went or what she did. It was Margaret who left the silver bag in your room.”

“I will swear that she has never entered this flat in her life,” cried Valentine.

“Then why in the world did she say she had? ” demanded Lionel Valentine took a step backwards. He took off his hat and laid it on the writing-table.

“Say she had! ” he echoed.

“Good Heaven, Val, don’t you understand! Margaret has owned up—”

“Owned she was here with Derrick that Monday? ” faltered Valentine.

“Without a moment’s beating about the bush,” Lionel explained. “I’ve as good as told you I lost my head. Before she had been five minutes in the house she was going to ring the bell for the youngster. I asked her to wait a bit and come to my den. As soon as the door was shut, I blurted it out I didn’t pick my words.”

“Try,” urged Valentine, “to tell me precisely what you said.”

“I looked straight into her face,” answered Lionel. “She seemed pretty well scared. I know where you went when you left home that day in February,’ I told her. ‘Your friends have been trying their hardest to protect you, but it’s no good. I’ve found you out,’ I said. ‘ You went to Chalmers at Val’s flat. Deny you were there, if you can! ’ ”

As Windermere was speaking he rose from his chair, walking excitedly about the room, while Valentine, scarcely less agitated, stood leaning against the writing-table.

“She can never have admitted—you must have misunderstood her,” he suggested.

“Misunderstood! ” exclaimed Lionel contemptuously.

“What did she say? ” asked Valentine.

“She drew herself up with the air of a tragedy queen. You know how magnificent she can look! She stared me full in the eyes. ‘Yes, I was there! ’ she said.”

“But there must have been some explanation —some qualification? ” urged Valentine.

“I didn’t wait to hear,” cried Lionel. “That was all I wanted. Don’t you think it was enough? What qualification could there be? I knew everything, God help me! I left the room at once. She followed me up, followed me into the hall, but what was the use of piling up the agony? She admitted she was here. Understand,” said Lionel, “I believe she was sorry. Before she went to Chesterborough, it almost seemed as if she were trying to make things go a bit better. A day after the fair, Val! I heard her call me when I got to the door, but I wouldn’t turn my head. I left the house, and I shall never go back. I came straight here.”

During the next quarter of an hour Valentine did his utmost to bring Lionel to a more pacificatory mood. Every thought of going to Champion Place this afternoon had been given up, although he had now an additional reason for wishing to go. An hour earlier he firmly believed that Henrietta’s explanation cleared Margaret without incriminating herself. Now, however, it seemed impossible to question Margaret’s visit to the flat Henrietta might take the responsibility on herself to shelter Mrs. Windermere, but Lionel’s wife could surely not have a reason for confessing she had been at Parliament Court if this were not the actual truth.

Yet Valentine tried to hope that some satisfactory explanation might be forthcoming — from Derrick himself in all probability. Evelyn would scarcely have summoned him to London unless he had something to say for himself; moreover, she had protested that when the whole truth was known Lionel Windermere could no longer blame his wife. He certainly blamed her very seriously at the present moment, but still Valentine endeavoured, not without difficulty, it is true, to pin his faith to Derrick.

“After all,” he urged, “you must admit that even if Margaret was injudicious enough to come here, no actual harm can have happened.”

“I refuse to admit anything of the kind,” shouted Lionel.

“You know they didn’t go off together—”

“What in Heaven’s name,” demanded Lionel, “is the use of trying to make me believe they wouldn’t have gone if they had not been hindered? How do I know they are not waiting till Chalmers is ready to leave his mother? But,” cried Lionel, “I can tell you one thing! I mean to be even with the scoundrel. I mean to have a go at him. I’m off to Eastbourne to-night To-morrow I’ll thrash him within an inch of his life.”

In this regard, at least, Valentine knew that Derrick was qualified to take excellent care of himself, and Lionel, in his present state of health, was unlikely to prove a very formidable assailant.

“What the dickens is the use of creating a scandal?” urged Valentine. “What satisfaction will it give you to drag Margaret’s name through the mire?”

“Anyhow, what do you expect me to do?” demanded Lionel. “Do you think I’m die man to take this sort of thing without a word? You’ve learnt precious little about me all these years if you imagine that! ”

As he was speaking, the bell rang again.

“Val,” exclaimed Lionel, “you’re not expecting anybody? ”

“No, no! I’ll go and see who it is,” said Valentine, turning towards the sitting-room door.

“For goodness’ sake don’t let anyone in,” Lionel insisted. “I can’t stick it I’ll go to your bedroom.”

“Stay where you are. That’ll be all right” answered Valentine. “Whoever it may be, I’ll soon get rid of him.” He reckoned without his guest, however, for on opening the outer door of the flat he found himself face to face with Derrick Chalmers.

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE contrast between Lionel Windermere and Derrick Chalmers struck Valentine at the moment as too bizarre. The one, he had left miserably dejected at the crisis of his life; the other, tall, erect, bending a wang-hee cane across his chest, his soft felt hat tilted very slightly on one side, his cheeks a little browner than usual, his eyes bright and amused as he recognised Valentine. Vice, according to Lionel, appeared to be triumphant “Ah, my dear Val,” he exclaimed, entering the passage without an invitation, “I’m lucky to have caught you.”

Valentine, however, thought himself extremely unlucky to be caught With Lionel’s recent threats ringing in his ears, he could only hope that Derrick’s somewhat strident voice might not carry so far as the sitting-room, the door of which he had fortunately closed.

Valentine, at the moment was inclined to forget that Derrick had come to London in response to Evelyn’s telegram, presumably to clear up the situation. He could think only of the immediate necessity to keep the two men apart It was certain that it would never do to let them come into contact, whereas Derrick, already well within the passage, would continue his way to the sitting-room as a matter of course. Another minute and he would be entering it!

The wisest course, it appeared, would be to take his arm, whisper a word of explanation, and either induce him to leave the flat before Lionel became aware of his arrival, or to convey him secretly to the bedroom.

Without staying to shut the outer door, lest this latest visitor should incontinently slip past, Valentine planted himself in the middle of the passage as if to bar the way.

“Hullo, Val, what’s up?” demanded Derrick, with a laugh, which, surely, could not fail to reach Lionel’s ears. “Upon my word, your hospitality isn’t overwhelming. Got some one there—what ? ”

Suddenly Derrick’s laughter ceased, while Valentine turned to see Windermere on the threshold of the sitting-room, looking for all the world as if he were preparing for a spring.

“It’s you, you infernal scoundrel, is it?” he cried.

The next instant he was making straight for Derrick, Valentine standing as a buffer between the two.

“Yes, it’s I, right enough,” answered Derrick, giving his moustache a ferocious twirl. “ Still, you needn’t go oi|t of the way to call names, you know.”

“Call names t ” shouted Lionel. “I’m going to do more than call names. I’m going to give you the soundest hiding you’ve ever had in the whole course of your life. Out of the light, Val! Out of the light, I say! Let me get alt him!”

Lionel, by this time, was pressing close upon Valentine, who shot out his left hand to fend off the assailant, who, in the meanwhile, tried to press forward, aiming at Derrick over Valentine’s shoulder.

“Steady on!” cried Derrick; and as Lionel still tried to get at him, he added, “If you want it, by Jove, you shall have it! ”

But Valentine perceived that the time had come for prompt and decisive action. Turning his back on Derrick, he gripped both of Windermere’s arms, forcing him with considerable difficulty back towards the open sitting-room door, Chalmers following up the struggling pair, on the watch lest Lionel should succeed in his strenuous efforts to break away.

“Let me go, Val, confound you!” he exclaimed.

But Valentine had him as if in a vice. Little by little Lionel found himself being forced along the passage, and into the room, whereupon his captor dexterously got a leg behind him, and he subsided into a chair.

“Now look here, you fellows,” said Valentine, standing over his victim as he pulled down his coat sleeves, “I’ll tell you straight I’m not going to have a shindy here. If you want a scrap, you can go somewhere else. No, you don't,” he added abruptly, as Lionel regained his feet, only to be pushed back into the chair the next instant “Get out of the way ! ” shouted Lionel. “You don’t give me room to breathe.”

“I am not going to move,” was the answer, “till you promise to behave yourself decently. Not if it’s all day.”

“You talk of behaving decently,” returned Windermere, while Derrick, with rather provocative coolness, stood with his hands in his trousers pockets, and his back to the fire-place. “What about this—”

“I quite agree with Val,” Chalmers interrupted. “We don’t Want a row. For that matter I came up from Eastbourne this morning, at some in convenience, to prevent anything of the kind. I had a wire from Evelyn Stainer yesterday afternoon. If you,” Derrick continued, “are prepared to act a little more like a reasonable being, I fancy I can soon make you feel better satisfied.”

“Satisfied! ” exclaimed Lionel contemptuously. “Satisfied! Would any man living be satisfied—”

“Why, yes,” said Derrick quietly; “upon my word, I think, in the circumstances, any man might be.”

“Now,” urged Valentine, “will you promise not to make a row? ”

“If you care to listen to me for ten minutes,” said Derrick, “you’ll admit there’s really nothing in the world to make a row about, you know.”

“Don’t be a fool, Val! ’’ cried Lionel. “Clear out of the way.”

“You must give me your word not to get out of your chair,” said Valentine. “At least not till you’ve heard what Derrick has to say for himself! ”

“Oh, very well! ” was the rather sulky answer, and then Valentine took a couple of steps backwards. For a moment there was silence, while Lionel straightened his necktie. Then he glared up into Derrick’s face. “Can you deny,” he demanded, “that my wife came to you in this flat on Monday — Monday, the twentieth of February? ”

“Why, no, I can’t,” said Chalmers. Seeing Lionel half rise from the chair, Valentine stepped hastily towards him. “But,” added Derrick, “though it’s true she was here, she wasn’t alone with me for half a second, if that’s what you’re driving at”

Lionel’s face expressed the most withering contempt.

“You admit she came to you? ” he insisted.

“To put it more precisely,” returned Derrick, “she was brought”

“Brought! ” shouted Windermere, while Valentine looked anxiously from one of his guests to the other. “Who in the world brought her?” he demanded.

“Oh well—my wife,” said Derrick. “Henrietta, you know. If you’ll only try to keep your hair on,” he continued, “I’ll tell you all about it Isn’t that what I’ve come to London for? It’s true, I didn’t expect the pleasure of seeing you face to face. This is an unrehearsed effect I went from Victoria to Champion Place and, after some discussion there, Evelyn suggested that I should deal with you through Val. Of course I meant to hold myself in readiness for a personal explanation if you wanted it”

“I certainly do want it,” Lionel insisted.

“My dear chap, you shall have it,” said Derrick, and then he turned to Valentine. “For goodness’ sake, give me something to drink, and then I’ll make a start,” he cried.

Thinking that it would be safe to turn his back on Lionel now, Valentine went to the sideboard, taking out some tumblers, a decanter of whisky and a siphon. Having mixed three pegs, he handed two to his visitors, though Lionel took no notice of his.

Windermere’s mind was in a ferment While it was true that Derrick’s words, and perhaps, more particularly, his manner, went some way towards tranquillizing him, for his life he could not see how it was possible that a convincing explanation could be forthcoming. It was admitted that Margaret had been at Parliament Court that Monday afternoon, but since her presence could no longer be denied, it seemed that an effort might be made to invent some plausible excuse to account for it.

On the other hand Lionel found it impossible to smother entirely the renewed hopes which were yet almost torture. He had only a little while ago left Constable Street, with the con viction that he had done with Margaret Formal arrangements would, no doubt have to be entered into, especially as far as the youngster was concerned, but the father and mother could never live together henceforth. But now, although Lionel reminded himself to be on the alert for any fresh attempt at deception, he was beginning to wonder whether, if he had left home less hastily, Margaret’s admission might not have been followed by some more or less credible explanation.

Meanwhile Derrick was emptying his tall tumbler at a draught “Have another? ” suggested Valentine.

“No, thanks, old man,” was the answer. “I’m going to get to business, and there’s nothing like beginning at the beginning.”

Lionel sat restlessly crossing and uncrossing his legs, his fists tightly clenched. Taking a box of cigarettes from the mantelshelf, Valentine handed it to Derrick, who put one between his lips and struck a match. Then he sat down in the writing - chair, stretching forth his long legs, while he inhaled some smoke.

“When Margaret introduced me to Henrietta in Constable Street about a couple of years ago,” he explained, “she was in mourning for her child She had already been separated from Tempest more than twelve months. I must tell you,” Derrick continued, “that she is a woman with the strongest religious scruples. I admit that I did my level best to overcome them, but no power on earth could have induced her to take steps to obtain a divorce. Her fervent belief was, that as long as Tempest lived, whatever his conduct might be, she was his wife in the sight of God. Nothing could shake it. At first,” said Derrick, “I thought she was a widow. I can’t tell you why, but that was my impression. I went to Champion Place so often during the few weeks after our introduction that Evelyn Stainer thought it judicious to open my eyes. Well, it was a rather painful awakening for me, and from the afternoon Evelyn took the job in hand she and I became the warmest friends. She begged me to leave Henrietta alone, and not to go to the house again, but I stipulated for a farewell interview. At least that served to remove any misconception between Henrietta and myself. I left the house tantalised to know that she loved me, but that, for the reason I have explained, she could never become my wife. For nearly two years,” Derrick continued, “we scarcely met a dozen times, never without an effort on my part to break down her determination. Then one morning during the first week of December I had a letter from Evelyn-’’

“To say that Tempest was dead! ” suggested Valentine.

Lionel sat upright in his chair, his clenched hands resting on his knees, his eyes fixed intently on Derrick’s face.

“To say that Tempest was dead,” was the answer. “Now, the outlook was entirely different Tempest had died in the south of England. He had behaved too villainously for any pretence at sorrow. Henrietta consented to see me on the day after his funeral She was prepared to marry me in six months’ time. But she had not seen Tempest for three years, and I gave her no peace. It soon became obvious that her real objection to fall in with my wishes was what her friends would say. She pleaded that such a hasty marriage as I was insisting upon would cause a scandal. I would not listen. I won Evelyn over to my side, and we both swore that no one should be' allowed to have the slightest suspicion but the three of us. I want you fellows,” said Derrick, “to understand that I am not using a figure of speech.

“The weeks after Tempest’s funeral were full of storm and stress. Henrietta, I have said, would infinitely sooner have waited. I was mad to make her my wife without an instant’s delay. I believe that her own feelings really played into my hands, and that her only actual objection was public opinion. When I say that we swore that the marriage should be kept a secret for six months, I mean it I can see the room now, with Henrietta standing between us, solemnly pledging first Evelyn, then myself, to absolute secrecy. After that,” exclaimed Derrick, “no time was lost Lucilla Knowles was got out of the way, Henrietta was supposed to be going on a visit to some friends. I picked her up early in the morning of the last day of the year, and we were married at Colbourae, a village in Surrey where I had spent a holiday one summer as a boy. From there we went on a short honeymoon, then my wife returned to Champion Place.

“And now,” said Derrick, with a smile at Lionel, who still looked intensely solemn, “I’m coming to the point All this is merely by way of an introduction—a necessary introduction to satisfy your mind, Windermere. But at last we come to that Monday afternoon, the twentieth of February. Perhaps you remember the sort of day it was! Rain had been threatening all the afternoon, and at about half-past five it came down in a deluge. Val had lent me this flat while he was abroad, and I was expecting Henrietta between five and half-past It was a little later when the bell rang, and on going to the door, instead of seeing my wife alone, I was astounded to see Margaret by her side.”

CHAPTER XXXV

LIONEL WINDERMERE was now leaning forward, with his face buried in his hands, while Valentine, free from apprehension at last, flung himself on to the sofa, and began to load his pipe. Derrick helped himself to another cigarette.

“It was astonishing enough to see Margaret,” he continued. " But what made the deepest impression on me at the moment was that anything on earth should have induced Henrietta to give away the show. Obviously that was what she had done in bringing Margaret to the flat She could scarcely do that without admitting she was my wife, whereas she had always insisted that no one was to know until six months had passed. Then, her idea was that we should go away together, and publish the belated news.

“I guessed on the instant,” Derrick explained, “that something desperate must have happened to lead Henrietta to act as she was doing. In fact, I knew that only one motive could have influenced her, and that was Margaret’s dire necessity. She was a pitiable figure. Although the rain had been falling in torrents, she had neither a mackintosh nor an umbrella. There was nothing in her hand but a silver bag.”

Lionel sat upright again with a start “Her short coat was saturated," Derrick continued, “her hat looked bedraggled. She stood outside in the corridor as if she shrank from coming in, and, as a matter of fact my wife had to take her arm, half forcing her into the passage. In this room she completely collapsed. Sitting where Windermere’s sitting now, she sobbed like a broken-hearted kid.”

Rising to his feet Lionel began to pace the room, his hands clasped behind him, his eyes on the carpet He looked thoroughly crushed and humiliated.

“I thought the best thing would be to leave the two women alone,” said Derrick. “I went to the other room and sat down on the bed. I could still hear the murmur of Henrietta’s voice as she kneeled beside Margaret’s chair. It was interrupted by irrepressible sobs. Goodness knows,” exclaimed Chalmers, “how much later it was when at last Henrietta joined me. She explained that she had been near Piccadilly Circus when the storm began. She couldn’t see an empty taxi, but having taken the precaution to prepare for rain, she did not much mind. Anyhow, she hurried on here, and at the comer of the Strand, just by the Grand Hotel, she spotted Margaret Henrietta," Derrick explained, “insists that she was never more surprised in her life. She would have guessed at once that something was amiss on seeing Margaret there alone, on foot without gloves, or the least protection from the rain. But it wasn’t only that It was her peculiar manner, the expression of her eyes, above all, perhaps, her obvious wish to avoid observation. But my wife was not easily to be repulsed. She asked where Margaret was off to, and was told to Tunbridge Wells.”

“Good heavens! To her mother! ” muttered Lionel, coming to a standstill on the hearthrug.

“But she had no luggage,” urged Derrick. “She had nothing but the silver bag, and she was thoroughly saturated. She seemed scarcely to know what she was saying, and Henrietta admits that she went through a severe struggle as they stood talking outside the hotel. At first she told Margaret flatly that she should not start on her journey in that condition; it was evident she was far from well, and she must return to Constable Street at once. Then the truth came out Margaret declared she should never enter the house again, that she was going to her boy at Mrs. Rattray’s. The question was what was to be done with her, and when she staggered backwards against the wall it was clear that something must be done quickly. I was waiting here only a few yards away, but then, to bring Margaret to this flat was to own up about our marriage.

“As I tell you,” said Derrick, “Henrietta went through a pretty tough struggle, but in the end sympathy carried the day. Alone with my wife in this room, Margaret made a clean breast of everything, and Henrietta’s efforts were devoted to inducing her to return home. This she wouldn’t hear of at first, but at last she was prevailed upon to go to her sister, in Grosvenor Gardens, for the night I,” Derrick added, “did my best to keep out of the way. I had seen Margaret only for a couple of minutes just after her arrival. Now that Henrietta wanted to bring her to the bedroom to bathe her eyes, I cleared out As a matter of fact, I went down to the hall to ask the porter to ring up a taxi. A little later I saw the two women pass out together, and they parted only a few doors from her sister’s house. I came up again in the lift,” said Derrick, “and was thinking about getting something to eat, when the telegram arrived from Eastbourne.”

“Then, of course,” suggested Valentine, “the people at Champion Place had no notion you had left London?”

“Not till the afternoon post on Tuesday. I had no time to wire on my way to Victoria, if I wanted to catch the train. When I got to Eastbourne I had too many things to look after. As a matter of fact,” Derrick added, “I wrote to Henrietta late on Monday night—too late for her to receive the letter by the morning post. Meanwhile, Henrietta, on the way to Grosvenor Gardens in the taxi, had insisted on secrecy about our marriage. It was only when Margaret was parting from Evelyn, after ten o’clock at Constable Street, that she missed the silver bag. Even then Margaret couldn’t recollect where she had left the thing.”

“If only I had been told the truth at once,” exclaimed Lionel, “what a world of misery I should have been spared! ’’

“Ah well, my dear fellow, I’m not certain,” said Derrick. “Some people go about looking for it, you know. Of course, you would have been told if Margaret had known what was passing in your mind. But she didn’t know. Neither did Evelyn, till she was enlightened by Val. She hoped even then that he would be able to satisfy you. She hoped that Margaret might never have to learn that you could suspect her. Besides, to tell the truth, there was a good deal of difficulty with Henrietta. She insisted on holding Evelyn firmly to her promise. Although Margaret had been told of our marriage, she hated the notion of letting anyone else into the secret—especially Val, who notoriously can’t consume his own smoke.”

“Still, Mrs. Derrick Chalmers—” Valentine broke off with a laugh. “It seems odd to call her that,” he added.

“Say Henrietta—what! ” cried Derrick.

“Anyhow, one could scarcely help jumping to a conclusion when she admitted being here.”

“Ah,” exclaimed Derrick, “history’s repeated. Just as she sacrificed herself—for it really amounted to a sacrifice to own she had married me in such a dickens of a hurry—in Margaret’s case, so she repeated the process for Evelyn.”

“Sacrificed herself for Evelyn Stainer? ” said Lionel, as if he scented some fresh intrigue.

“Oh well, ask old Val!” was the answer. “We’ll put it in this way. My wife suspected it was necessary for Evelyn’s general well-being that he shouldn’t think she had ever entered this room in her life.”

“Still,” Lionel doggedly persisted, “I maintain I ought to have been told.”

“I’m not going to claim that we’ve all acted with the greatest wisdom in the world,” said Derrick, with a shrug. “Especially Val! He was actually the cause of the mischief. If he hadn’t philandered with Miss Lucilla Knowles, everything would have been plain sailing. As it was, Evelyn put her foot down yesterday, and wired for me. Together this morning we have spent an hour or so in persuading Henrietta to blossom forth as my wife before the world. Now,” he added, lighting another cigarette, “I hope you’re satisfied.”

For a few seconds Lionel did not answer. The silence was broken only by an occasional siren from some craft on the river. His hair was roughened, his eyes blinked, and he stood gazing at the floor. Suddenly, however, he looked up into Derrick’s face.

“Oh, of course,” he answered, “I see I’ve been making a confounded fool of myself. I’m sorry, Chalmers.”

“That’s quite all right,” said Derrick, and his hand went out.

“What’s the next thing? ” asked Valentine.

“I’m off home at once. I never thought to enter the house again,” murmured Lionel. “What else can I do but implore Margaret to forgive me? I admit,” he continued, “that an hour ago I didn’t believe that anything in the world could convince me. I knew the bag was my wife’s. I was right so far. Thank God, I was wrong in everything else.”

With that he turned towards the door, and Valentine, with a glance at Derrick, followed him into the passage.

“Val,” he said, standing on the threshold, “I’ve got a bit of an ordeal in front of me stilL Upon my soul, I don’t know how to look Margaret in the face. You see, old fellow, it was all my fault from the beginning. I drove her out of the house that Monday, and she did just the natural thing. She turned to the youngster. As soon as she learnt what was in my mind, she said she had been here, but I refused to listen to another word of explanation. I don’t seem to have a leg to stand on.”

“The best thing you can do,” suggested Valentine, “is to get away for two or three months—another honeymoon, you know.”

“If she only would! ” cried Lionel.

“I’ll bet you twenty to one,” said Valentine, as Lionel walked away towards the lift.

CHAPTER XXXVI

“ALL’S well that ends well ! ” exclaimed Derrick, as Valentine rejoined him a few moments after Lionel Windermere’s departure. “By the by,” he added, “according to Henrietta, who is generally right, you’re by way of making a fresh beginning.”

“Where are you off to now? ” asked Valentine, rather hastily.

“Back to Champion Place,” said Derrick, with a glance at his wrist watch.

“Then suppose we go together. I was on the point of starting when Lionel put in an appearance.”

“Well, now,” cried Derrick, resting a hand on the other’s shoulder, “if you wouldn’t very much mind putting off your visit for an hour or so—

“My dear fellow,” Valentine interrupted, “I seem to have been put off for goodness knows how long already.”

“That’s all right,” said Derrick. “Another hour can’t make much difference. The fact is.” he explained, “I’m going to carry . Henrietta away to Eastbourne. I’ve wired for rooms at the Cavendish. She’s a bit shy about it, and I fancy she would rather get away without seeing anyone but Evelyn. Give us a fair start, and you’ll find the only person you really care to see alone.”

Insisting that there was not another moment to spare, Derrick lost no time in setting forth to Champion Place.

Valentine followed him as soon as an hour had passed.

“Well,” he asked, as he entered Evelyn’s presence, “have they got safely away? ”

“A quarter of an hour ago,” was the answer. “Henrietta looked as if she had committed the unpardonable sin. She is always a wee bit over-anxious about what people will think of her, you know. She allowed Derrick to sweep her off her feet just before Christmas, but really I believe she repented the instant she had given her promise. Anyhow,” Evelyn added, “poor Mr. Windermere is satisfied at last! ”

“Oh yes, Windermere is satisfied-’’

“That sounds almost as if you were not! ”

“I’m still rather perplexed about one thing,” Valentine admitted.

“What is that? ” she demanded.

“I have never been able to understand what happened between you and Lucilla to make you suddenly treat me—well, so much more decently, you know.”

“Did—did I? ” asked Evelyn, in little above a whisper.

“Oddly enough,” he persisted, “the change seemed to date from the moment you discovered that she had given you away.”

“You admired her very much,” suggested Evelyn in a louder voice—“very much indeed! ” “I am afraid,” he explained, “that I was merely out for a—for a lark. The mistake you made was in thinking I ever took the affair seriously.”

“Perhaps,” said Evelyn, “you are the kind of man not to take any ‘affair’ very seriously! At least you must admit that your conduct was rather misleading. When Henrietta tried to make it more regular, you certainly showed very little reluctance. If you had no serious intentions —isn’t that the correct phrase—towards Lucilla, why did you accept our invitation? ”

“I imagine that you know as well as I,” answered Valentine, with a smile. “I imagine Henrietta told you. Though,” he added, “you have not told me the cause of your reformation when you knew that Lucilla had given you away."

“Suppose,” Evelyn faltered, “that it is impossible to explain without—without giving myself away.”

“I hope to goodness that’s what you’re going to do,” he replied, taking her hands.

“But, don’t you see,” she cried, looking up abruptly, only to lower her eyes the next instant, “that it would be absolutely out of the question if Lucilla had not—”

“If Lucilla had not what? ” he urged, as Evelyn hesitated.

“If she had not played false,” she murmured, as Valentine drew her nearer. “How could I ever have allowed myself to come between you two?” she insisted. “She declared again and again that she was fond of you. I believed her, till she went out of her way to make you think it was I who left the silver bag at your flat.”

“Then she put herself outside the pale,” suggested Valentine. “You felt you had a free hand! ”

“Certainly not,” said Evelyn, as he pressed her still closer. “At least not till I came home from Parliament Court Having deceived me in the one respect, I thought she might be false through and through. I determined to find out I succeeded in making an appeal to her feelings. The girl is a curious mixture. As a sort of explanation for her conduct she told me her story. I wonder whether it was true, after all! She had been engaged to be married, and shamefully thrown over after her father’s death. Having been vilely treated by a man, she seemed to think she was justified in treating other men vilely. You appeared to be fair game. I hope,” added Evelyn, “ I’m not dealing a very crushing blow at your self-esteem.” As Valentine laughed a little ruefully, perhaps, she continued: "You may remember I told you that interview was the most important which I had ever experienced. It’s true I hoped that Lucilla, having owned up, intended to go straight in the future. But it appears she had a relapse during the night, and determined to make one last effort to vanquish you the next morning.”

“I’m afraid, altogether, it must have been a painful interview for you,” answered Valentine.

For a moment there was no answer. Then Evelyn hid her face against his coat " Ah, no,” she whispered. “I had never felt so pleased in my life! ”

The End