Gordon licked dry lips. Life was drab and sordid, but nothing in life was quite so vulgar and hateful as the popular press. The only time in his life that he had ever experienced a nightmare, the vision had taken a particularly hideous shape. He dreamt that he had been locked up for smothering a chorus girl, and was ordered by the judge to write his impressions of the murder in a Sunday newspaper. “You will perhaps think better of this in a few days,” he said huskily. “I feel sure that, when you realise what you are doing----” She sat down at his beautifully tidy writing-table, took up a pen, and snatched from his stationery rack a sheet of notepaper. “Now tell me what you like for breakfast,” she said. “Smoked haddock ... salmon steak ... fish is good for the brain. Do you mind if I call you Gord?” CHAPTER IV One day Diana came back from a conscientious tour of the stores and found a thin and middle-aged lady sitting in the drawing-room. She greeted Diana with a deferential smile. She was such a middle-aged lady as might have stepped from the pages of a late Victorian novel, and Diana regarded her steadily, for she wore no hat, had the skimpy beginnings of a purple wool jumper on her knees, and in her hands two knitting needles that seemed to be operating of their own volition all the time she talked. “Good afternoon! You’re Miss Ford, aren’t you, my dear? I’m Miss Staffle, and I do hope we are going to be good friends!” “I hope so,” said Diana. “We’ll be better friends when I understand. Are you a guest of ours?” Click-flash-flicker went the needles. Diana looked in awe. She was the only woman in the world who had never knitted a jumper. “Well ... yes. Mr. Selsbury thought you would be rather lonely. It doesn’t do for us girls to be too much alone. We brood.” “I’m brooding at this minute.” Diana was very incisive in business hours. “Do I understand that you have been engaged as a chaperone?” “Companion,” murmured Miss Staffle. “That makes it easier,” Diana opened her pocket-book. “Your salary is----?” Miss Staffle murmured the amount. “Here is two months’ pay,” said Diana. “I have decided not to engage a companion.” She rang the bell; the needles became stationary. “Eleanor,” to the svelte parlourmaid, “Miss Staffle is leaving before tea. Will you see that her boxes are brought down, and tell Trenter to have a nice clean taxi waiting?” “But, my dear”--Miss Staffle’s voice was slightly acidulated--“Mr. Selsbury engaged me, and I am afraid....” “Mr. Selsbury doesn’t want a companion,” said Diana. “Now, my angel, are you going to give me trouble, or are you going to be a sweet little cherub and fly?”