“Rather you should say, ‘Where has she not been?’ She has been almost everywhere, I believe.” “I do think she is lovely, don’t you?” Yootha persisted. “If I were a man I should be head over heels in love with her.” “Some men are,” La Planta answered in an odd tone. “But she doesn’t care about men, I think. I mean in a general way.” “Did you say she had been in China?” Yootha suddenly asked abruptly. “I didn’t--but she has been. She was in Shanghai a good while.” “She is a widow, I am told,” Cora presently hazarded. “Yes.” “Did you know her husband?” “No. He died several years ago.” “But you have known her a good while?” “Only a year or two.” “Is she entirely English? I sometimes think----” “Yes?” “I was only going to say she sometimes gives me the impression that she has a foreign strain.” “If Australians are ‘foreigners,’” La Planta said lightly, “then she has a ‘foreign’ strain, because her parents were Australians--they were sheep farmers in Queensland.” “You don’t say so. That no doubt accounts for the queer expressions she sometimes uses. They were rich people, no doubt.” “Well off, I fancy, but not enormously rich.” “Then her fortune, I take it, came to her from her husband?” La Planta had been answering more or less mechanically, for the wine he had drunk had dulled, to some extent, his ordinarily keen intelligence. Now, all at once, he seemed to become alive again. “You seem greatly interested in Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson’s private life, Mrs. Hartsilver, and you too, Miss Hagerston,” he said suddenly. “Oddly enough a man you know, in fact it was I who introduced him to you, called to see me only an hour ago for the express purpose of cross-questioning me with regard to the same lady. Merely a coincidence no doubt, but a singular coincidence.” His tone, as he said this, resembled the tone he had adopted whilst addressing Preston, though it was not quite so marked. Mrs. Hartsilver and Yootha Hagerston winced nevertheless, and presently they changed the subject. He joined them in the drawing-room about ten minutes later, and half an hour or so afterwards took his departure rather abruptly. Though he had drunk more than was good for him, he knew he had not said anything that he would wish to recall. He walked leisurely down Portland Place in search of a taxi, then decided to walk home. In Regent Street, as he passed into the halo of light shed down by a street lamp, he came face to face with Stapleton. “Why Archie,” the latter exclaimed, “I was just thinking of you. Aren’t you dining with Mrs. Hartsilver?” “I was,” La Planta answered, “but she and Yootha Hagerston rather bored me, so I came away early.” “Wasn’t it a dinner party?” “No, only those two.” “Only the two! Then why were you invited?” “I don’t know, but I think I can guess. Come along home with me. There are one or two things I want to talk to you about.”