"Oh, I don't know. I always expect bad news when I see a lawyer's letter or a parson's face. Well? Has Lady Canvey been converted, or has Jim gone to that place where the climate forbids skating?" "Nothing of the sort has happened," said Lionel, dryly. "I have merely come to chat with you." "Sit down, then, though I warn you I don't feel companionable." "You are worried." "My dear man, when am I anything else but worried, with Jim for a husband, and the Duke behaving like Shylock at his worst? You and Jim have made a mess of things." "I don't know about Jim," said Lionel, resenting this ungrateful speech, "but I did my best to put matters in the right light." "Oh, Lord, who wanted a right light? The less light on Jim's and my affairs the better. A few white lies would have resulted in a larger sum than that miserable two hundred with which the Duke insulted us." "I am not in the habit of telling lies, white or black, Lady James." "I daresay. You parsons are so ridiculously punctilious. As if diplomatic lies were not as oil on the troubled waters of this world." "I did not come to discuss this," said Lionel, seeing how utterly impossible she was, "but to help you in your trouble." "What trouble?" "I don't know. I was reading in the library, when a feeling came to me that I must see you at once--that you needed assistance." Leah looked rather queer. What could he possibly know of her late experience? "Telepathy, I suppose." "Well, that may be the scientific name for the Divine Spirit." "The what?" "The Divine Spirit," he repeated, firmly and seriously. "I believe that the impulse to seek you came from above. You are in danger." "Am I--of being bored to death?" "You can't deny that you are in trouble of some sort. I can see it in your expression." "My trouble is my own. I share it with no one." "Then you are in----" "Pray don't question me," snapped Leah, with a nervous glance around. This interference of the Unseen with her material affairs was both weird and uncomfortable. She could not deny the panic that had driven her headlong from the security of the flesh, and it was remarkable that Lionel, unsummoned and unsought, should seek her at so critical a moment. The feeling that he was meddling with what did not concern him, annoyed her the more. "I wish you would not frighten me," she cried, with an angry determination to stop this uncanny business. "Perhaps it is your conscience that is frightening you." "How dare you say that?" "Because there is something serious the matter, or I should not have been called to your assistance." "I never called you." "Then your good angel did." "I don't believe in such things." "Do you believe in anything?" "Yes," she said defiantly--"in myself." "That is a poor help in time of trouble." "I have managed very well hitherto." "Can you substantiate that statement, seeing how embarrassed your worldly affairs are at this moment?"