"Certainly," she replied to Mrs. Orgreave. And she thought: "This is the second time she has sent me with a message to Edwin Clayhanger." Suddenly, she blushed in confusion before the mistress of the home. "Is it possible," she asked herself,--"is it possible that Mrs. Orgreave doesn't guess what has happened to me? Is it possible she can't see that I'm different from what I used to be? If she knew... if they knew... here!" She left the room like a criminal. When she was going down the stairs, she discovered that she held the _Signal_ in her hand. She had no recollection of picking it up, and there was no object in taking it to the breakfast-room! She thought: "What a state I must be in!" CHAPTER II A RENDEZVOUS I "I suppose you've never thought about me once since I've left!" She was sitting on the sofa in the small, shelved breakfast-room, and she shot these words at Edwin Clayhanger, who was standing near her. The singular words were certainly uttered out of bravado: they were a challenge to adventure. She thought: "It is madness for me to say such a thing." But such a thing had, nevertheless, come quite glibly out of her mouth, and she knew not why. If Edwin Clayhanger was startled, so was she startled. "Oh yes, I have!" he stammered--of course, she had put him out of countenance. She smiled, and said persuasively: "But you've never inquired after me." "Yes, I have," he answered, with a hint of defiance, after a pause. "Only once." She continued to smile. "How do you know?" he demanded. Then she told him very calmly, extinguishing the smile, that her source of information was Janet. "That's nothing to go by!" he exclaimed, with sudden roughness. "That's nothing to go by--the number of _times_ I've inquired!" II