alone with him, and this, as all the while she dreadfully foresaw, heaped up the reckoning that her conscience would presently have to pay. One afternoon she and Margaret and Monica went to tea at Plashers Mead, when to her sharp annoyance she found herself next to Guy's friend. She made up her mind at the beginning of the conversation that he was criticizing her and, feeling shy and awkward, she could only reply to him in gasps and monosyllables and blushes. He seemed to her the coldest person she had ever known: he seemed utterly without emotion or sympathy: he must surely be the worst friend imaginable for Guy. He took no interest in anything apparently; and then suddenly he definitely revealed himself as the cause of Guy's ambition to conquer London. "I think Guy ought to go away from here," he was saying. "I told him when he first took this house that he would be apt to dream away all his time here. You must make him give it up, Miss Grey. He's such an extraordinarily brilliant person that it would be terrible if he let himself do nothing in the end. Of course he's been lucky to meet you, and that's kept him alive, but now he ought to go to London. He really ought." Pauline hated herself for the way in which she was gasping out her monosyllabic agreement with all this; but she did not feel able to argue with Michael Fane. He disconcerted her by his air of severe judgment, and however hard she tried she could not contradict him. Then suddenly in a rage with herself and with him she began to talk nonsense at the top of her voice, rattling on until her sisters looked up at her in surprize, while Michael evidently embarrassed scarcely answered. At last the uncomfortable visit came to an end, and as she walked back with Guy, while the others went in front, she began to inveigh against the friend more fiercely than ever. "My dear, I can't think why you have him to stay with you. He hates your being engaged to me...." "Oh, nonsense," Guy interrupted rather crossly. "He does, he does; and he hates your staying down here. He says Plashers Mead is ruining you and that you ought to go to London. Now, you see, I know why you want to go there." "Really, Pauline, you're talking nonsense. I'm going to London because I'm positive that your father and mother both think I ought to go. And I'm positive myself that I ought to go. I've been wrong to stay here all this time. I've done nothing to help forward our marriage. Look how nervous and ... how nervous and overwrought you've become. It's all my fault." "How I hate that friend of yours!" Guy looked up in astonishment at the fervour of her tone. "And how he hates me," she went on. "Oh, really, my dear child, you are ridiculous," Guy exclaimed petulantly. "Are you going to take up this attitude towards all my friends? You're simply horridly jealous, that's the whole matter."