"I felt so tempted," she muttered. "I forget who it was who said 'Temptation is so pleasing because it need never be resisted.'" He uttered an impatient exclamation under his breath. "Let's sit down on the staircase," she pleaded, "I'm warmer now. I think this would be a nice place to sit down." She sank down on one of the broad, low steps just below the landing, and pulled him down, nestling up close to him. "Oh, Bill," she whispered, "it _is_ a comfort to be with you--a real comfort. You don't know what I've gone through since I came up to bed. I felt all the time as if Something was trying to get at me--something cruel, revengeful, miserable!" "You ate too much at dinner," he said shortly. "You oughtn't to have taken that brandy-cherries ice." They had very soon got past the stage during which Donnington had tried to say pretty things to Bubbles. "Perhaps I did"--he felt the gurgle of amusement in her voice. "I was very hungry, and the food here is very good. It must be costing a lot of money--all this sort of thing. How nice to be rich! Oh, Bill, how _very_ nice to be rich!" "I don't agree," he said sharply. "Varick doesn't look particularly happy, that I can see." "I wonder if Aunt Blanche would marry him _now_?" "I don't suppose he'd give her the chance--now." It wasn't a very chivalrous thing to say, or hear said, and Bubbles pinched him so viciously that he nearly cried out. "You're not to talk like that of my Aunt Blanche. Quite lately--not three months ago--someone asked her to marry him for the thousandth time! But of course she said no--as I shall do to you, a thousand times too, if we live long enough." She waited a moment, then said slowly: "Her man's rather like you. He's very much what you will be, Bill, in about thirty years from now--a plain, good, priggish old fellow. Of course you know who it is? Mark Gifford, of the Home Office. Aunt Blanche only keeps in with him because he's very useful to her sometimes." And then she added, with a touch of strange cruelty, "Just as _I_ shall always keep in with you, Bill, however tiresome and disagreeable you may be! Just because I find you so useful. You're being useful now; I don't feel frightened any more." She drew herself from the shelter of his strong, protecting arm, and slid along the polished step till she leant against the banister. He could just see the whiteness of her little face shining out of the big fur collar. "If you're feeling all right again," he said rather coolly, "I think we'd both better go to bed. Speaking for myself, I feel sleepy!"