At the back of his mind he was certain that this rather vulgar girl – for he had a nice and finicking taste in the matter of women – had discovered the Chelford millions. If he had not had this belief he would not have made his call. He believed that by some accident, or by reason of her close association with Harry Alford, she had unveiled the mystery of the lost gold; and his object now was to discover how far his theory was justified by facts.

“Is there no way of making that agreement more binding, Mr Gilder?” she asked. “You’re a lawyer – couldn’t you draw up something he wouldn’t wriggle out of? Naturally, I’m too much of a lady to want any man to marry me if he doesn’t want to marry me. If he just hinted as much I should tell him to go – I should simply say, ‘Oh, very well, I’m not at all anxious to marry, thank you very much.’ I think a girl who throws herself at a man’s head is despicable, don’t you, Mr Gilder?”

He did not answer this query.

“I could draw you up an agreement that would be legally binding, but I doubt if even that would help you. Why trust him at all?” he asked bluntly.

She dropped her eyes at this.

“Who, or whom, could I trust?” she asked, and took an invisible crumb off her dress. “This is such an awful world, and men are so very deceitful, Mr Gilder. The young ones are the worst, of course, but they haven’t experience. I do think that a man isn’t in the prime of life till he’s about forty-five.” She waited. “Or fifty. He’s sort of settled down and sowed his wild oats, and he doesn’t want to go out at nights and all that. And I’ll admit that Arthur is flighty. I wouldn’t tell it to anybody but you, but he tried to kiss me any number of times, and he once said the most terrible thing to me at Fossaway Manor. I said to him: ‘Arthur, you seem to forget that you’re speaking to a lady,’ and he just curled up and died, if you understand me. I don’t mean that he actually perished–”

“I understand what you mean,” said Gilder, and went on to make his most startling revelation. “Now listen, Miss Wenner. You’re a sensible girl and I can talk to you as I could talk to very few people.”

This cliché of intensive flattery, which so seldom fails even when employed upon intelligent people, produced in Miss Wenner the strained attentiveness which was called for.

“Suppose I tell you,” said Fabrian Gilder darkly, “that Gine is already trying to anticipate your discovery?”

“I beg your pardon?” Mary Wenner was not very strong on the more flowery expressions of speech.