As Craven had predicted it was a fine clear night, dry underfoot, starry overhead. If Miss Van Tuyn had had with her a chosen companion she would have enjoyed her walk. She was absolutely self-possessed, and thoroughly capable of taking care of herself. No terrors of London affected her spirit. But she was angry and bored at being alone. She felt almost for the first time in her life neglected and even injured. And she was determined to try to find out whether her strong suspicions about Lady Sellingworth and Craven were well founded. If really Craven was giving a dinner somewhere, and Lady Sellingworth was dining with friends somewhere else, she had no special reason for irritation. She might possibly be mistaken in her unpleasant conviction that both of them had something to do which they preferred to dining with her. But if they were dining together and alone she would know exactly how things were between them. For neither of them had done what would surely have been the natural thing to do if there were no desire for concealment; neither of them had frankly stated the truth about the dinner. “If they are dining together they don’t wish me to know it,” Miss Van Tuyn said to herself, as she walked along Grosvenor Square and turned down Carlos Place. “For if I had known it they might have felt obliged to invite me to join them, as I was inviting them, and as I was the one who introduced Adela Sellingworth to the _Bella Napoli_.” And as she remembered this she felt more definitely injured. For she had taken a good deal of trouble to persuade Lady Sellingworth to dine out in Soho, had taken trouble about the food and about the music, had, in fact, done everything that was possible to make the evening entertaining and delightful to her friend. It was even she, by the way, who had beckoned Craven to their table and had asked him to join them after dinner. And in return for all this Adela Sellingworth had carried him off, and perhaps to-night was dining with him alone at the _Bella Napoli_! “These old beauties are always the most unscrupulous women in the world,” thought Miss Van Tuyn, as she came into Berkeley Square. “They never know when to stop. They are never satisfied. It’s bad enough to be with a greedy child, but it’s really horrible to have much to do with a greedy old person. I should never have thought that Adela Sellingworth was like this.” It did not occur to her that perhaps some day she would be an old beauty herself, and even then would perhaps still want a few pleasures and joys to make life endurable to her.