He hesitated, as if to leave them; and quite automatically, without being able to do otherwise, Leonora held her hand to bid good-bye; he took it with reluctance. The moment was passing, and she had not even asked him where he was staying: she had learnt nothing of the man of whom Meshach had warned her husband to beware. 'Good morning,' he said, 'I'm very glad to have met you. Perhaps----' 'Won't you come and see us this afternoon, if you aren't engaged?' she suggested quickly. 'My husband will be anxious to meet you, I know.' He appeared to vacillate. 'Oh, do, Mr. Twemlow!' urged Milly, enchanted. 'It's very good of you,' he said, 'I shall be delighted to call. It's quite a considerable time since I saw Mr. Stanway.' He laughed. This was his first reference to John. 'I'm so glad you asked him, ma,' said Milly, as they walked down Oldcastle Street. 'Your father said we must be polite to Mr. Twemlow,' her mother replied coldly. 'He's frightfully rich, I'm sure,' Milly observed. At dinner Leonora told John that Arthur Twemlow was coming. 'Oh, good!' he said: nothing more. * * * * * In the afternoon the mother and her eldest and youngest, supine and exanimate in the drawing-room, were surprised into expectancy by the sound of the front-door bell before three o'clock. 'He's here!' exclaimed Milly, who was sitting near Leonora on the long Chesterfield. Ethel, her face flushed by the fire, lay like a curving wisp of straw in John's vast arm-chair. Leonora was reading; she put down the magazine and glanced briefly at Ethel, then at the aspect of the room. In silence she wished that Ethel's characteristic attitudes could be a little more demure and sophisticated. She wondered how often this apparently artless girl had surreptitiously seen Fred Ryley since the midnight meeting on Thursday, and she was amazed that a child of hers, so kindly disposed, could be so naughty and deceitful. The door opened and Ethel sat up with a bound. 'Mr. Burgess,' the parlourmaid announced. The three women sank back, disappointed and yet relieved.