Apparently she did not attach any great significance to them, for she did not turn her head, sending the car spinning to the broad gravelled place before the old porch. He jumped down when she stopped the machine and helped her alight.

“I have to prepare you for a curious bird,” he said, and described Mr Puttler with more truth than flattery.

“What is he, Dick?”

“He’s an accountant,” said Dick glibly. “He’s also quite an amusing fellow and full of weird information. I’m going to try a little on you. Do you know that Robinson Crusoe was a German?”

“Why, of course, his father lived in Bremen,” she said, and he was still laughing when he took her into the library.

In the presence of his fiancée Lord Chelford exhibited a nervousness and a gaucherie which might have been understandable if he were meeting her for the first time. He had never quite overcome the novelty of his engagement, and his attitude towards her was one of awe rather than of reverence.

“How do you do, Leslie?”

He had never kissed her in his life; now he held her hand for a fraction of a second and dropped it as though it burnt him.

“Do you know Mr Tuttler?”

“Puttler,” said the other, and Leslie looked into the melancholy eyes and read something in them that Dick had missed, and possibly Mr Puttler’s closest associate had not seen.

She did not pay him the poor compliment of feeling sorry for him, though she read in those quick-lighting deeps a craving for woman’s sympathy which Nature, by her cruel handiwork, had repelled in advance.

“Glad to know you, Miss Gine. I know your brother – Mr Arthur Gine, the solicitor, isn’t it? I thought so.”

“Has Arthur come?” asked Harry.

“No,” said Dick. “We’re going to have tea in the drawing-room. Will you come along, Harry?”

“Surely, surely,” he said hastily. “You’ll excuse me, dear.” It was an effort to employ even so banal an expression of affection.

When they reached the beautiful drawing-room, with its windows open to the terrace, and a riot of gorgeous sulphur chrysanthemums showing above the stone balustrade, they found they were alone. Mr Puttler had melted away as they were passing through the hall. He explained afterwards that he wanted to stroll through the gardens, but the girl knew that the man’s uncanny instinct had told him that, of all the people in the world, these two were satisfied best with one another’s company.

“Did you sleep?” she asked.

He nodded.

“I didn’t get up till lunch time,” he said. “And you?”

She shook her head.

“No, I couldn’t sleep. Poor Arthur!”

“Did you try beefsteak?” he asked brutally. “Really, the most incongruous company I can imagine is a black eye and Arthur Gine!”