At the same time Mr. Alec Feilding, whose ears ought to have been burning, was engaged in a serious conversation in his own studio with Armorel's companion. The conversation took the form of reproach. 'I expected,' he said--'I had a right to expect--greater devotion--more attention to business. It was not for play that you undertook the charge of this girl. How long have you been with her? Three months? And no more influence with her than when you began.' 'Not a bit more,' Mrs. Elstree replied. She had of course taken the most comfortable chair by the fire. 'Not a bit, my dear Alec. What is more, I never shall have any influence over her. A society girl I could manage. I know what she wants, and how she looks at things. With such a girl as Armorel I am powerless.' 'She is a woman, I suppose.' He occupied a commanding position on his own hearthrug, towering above his visitor, but yet he did not command her. 'Therefore, you think, open to flattery and artful wiles. She is a woman, and yet, strange to say, not open to flattery.' 'Rubbish! It is because you are too stupid or too careless to find out the weak point.' 'To return, Alec: I have failed. I have no influence at all upon this girl. I have spent hours and hours in singing your praise. I have enlarged upon the absolute necessity of giving you a rest from business cares. I have proposed that she and I together--that was the way I put it--should buy a share in the paper, and that she should advance my half. Oh! I grew eloquent on the glory that two women thus coming to the relief of a man like yourself would achieve in after years. I tried to speak from my heart, Alec.' The woman caught his hand, but he drew it away. 'Oh! you deserve no help. You are hard-hearted, and you are selfish: you have broken every promise you ever made me: you spend all that you have in selfish pleasures: you leave me almost without assistance----' 'When I have got you into the easiest and most luxurious berth that can be imagined; when I have asked you for nothing but a simple----' 'Yes, dear Alec, but you see that an honest acknowledgment would be worth all this goodness. Well, I say that I spoke from my heart, because in spite of all I was proud of my man--mine, yes, though Philippa still imagines, poor wretch!' 'Do leave my cousin's name out of it, will you, Zoe?' he said, a little less roughly.