Mary had a daily servant, who was a charwoman in the morning, a parlourmaid in the afternoon and her own natural self after six, at which hour she left for the night. This aged woman, with her dingy white cap askew, opened the door and took the card in to her mistress, leaving Mr Gilder on the mat. She came back with an ingratiating smile, and pointed to the room where Mary was to be found.

“This is an unexpected pleasure, Mr Gilder,” said Miss Wenner conventionally. “I’m sure I never thought that you would be as good as your word. Sit down, won’t you?”

She really was pretty, he observed; in her plain house dress she was prettier than in a more elaborate attire. The flat, though small, was well but not expensively furnished. It left him with the impression that she had bought everything with her own money, and he had rather a nice feeling towards her in consequence. For Fabrian Gilder was a queer mixture of Puritan and adventurer. Later, Mary had her flat to thank for certain pleasant developments.

There was only one chair on which be could sit, and this he took.

“You’d like a cup of tea? I’m just going to have mine,” said Miss Wenner. “I’ve been out all day shopping and everything.”

“Are you – er – working?” asked Gilder delicately.

“No, I’m not in business,” replied Miss Wenner, more correctly. “Only common people ‘work’: the gentility “go to business.”

She went out, disappearing in a mysterious cupboard, which had just enough room for a tiny kitchen table and a gas-stove, and he heard the rattle of cup against saucer, the “plomp!” of a gas ring being lighted, and after a while she came back, a little flushed and apologetic.

“Maids are so stupid, aren’t they?” she asked. “You can never trust these common daily people. I had an awfully nice maid, but she went away and got married, the stupid child!”

She received very few visitors, she told him. Her “sewing woman” came twice a week. She had a very dear friend – a girl, she hastened to assure him – who spent Tuesday evenings with her and sometimes slept in the flat. But a male visitor was the rarest of phenomena.

“You can’t be too careful,” said Miss Wenner primly. “A girl’s character is her principal asset – don’t you agree, Mr Gilder?”

Mr Gilder agreed.

“That is what I have always said about my work with Harry – excuse me, I mean Lord Chelford, only we were such awfully good friends that I’ve never dreamt of calling him by anything but his Christian name.”

“And did you call Richard Alford by his Christian name?” asked Mr Gilder, not without malice.

Her nose went up in the air.