“I was wondering whether you would like to ask her down here to stay a weekend? I shall have a lot of work to do, and she’s a very excellent stenographer. But I’ll be perfectly frank with you, and tell you that that is not the only reason I’d like you to invite her. She’s been in some kind of scrape and I want to help her through.”

Leslie Gine was not curious, or she might have questioned him more about this mythical trouble.

“I don’t know why she shouldn’t come,” she said. “If you’ll give me her address I will write to her. I rather fancy that Dick’s main objection to her is that she had some sort of attachment for Harry.”

“She’s almost forgotten Harry,” smiled her brother. “To be perfectly candid, I like the girl. She’s not a lady, of course, but ‘lady’ nowadays is a vague and meaningless term. And there was really nothing in her affair with Harry. I mean it was not serious.”

“I’ve never thought so,” said the girl, and thereupon the question of Mary Wenner was dismissed.

He had, he said, some work to do that night, and left her alone in the drawing-room, and for once she did not find time hanging very heavily upon her hands. Ordinarily the prospect of an evening spent alone would have seemed intolerably dull, but she had so much to think about, so many perspectives to adjust, that she rather welcomed her solitude.

Even at so short a distance of time, her experience with Fabrian Gilder seemed grotesquely unreal. Perhaps she was still numb from the shock of it, for, going over that unpleasant feature incident by incident, she could be neither angry nor amused. Perhaps she was a little afraid – she still felt the pressure of his strong hands upon her, still saw the grey fires that burnt in his eyes. And Dick! how natural it had been to go to him – how safe she had felt! Would it have been the same if Harry Chelford had providentially arrived? She was sure in her mind that she would not have run to Harry, or found comfort in his encircling arms.

She looked at the clock; it was ten minutes past nine. Dick would be back at Fossaway Manor by now, and she went out into the hall and, taking off the receiver of the telephone, gave a number.

Arthur’s study door opened into the hall, and he came out.

“To whom are you telephoning?” he asked suspiciously.

“I’m calling up Fossaway Manor,” she said.

“You’re not going to invite Dick Alford over, are you?” he demanded resentfully.