Francis Lingen, absurd! Mr. Urquhart? Ah, that was quite another thing. She grew hot, she grew quite cold, and suddenly she began to sob. Oh, no, no, not that. A flood of tossing thoughts came rioting and racing in, flinging crests of foam, like white and beaten water. She for a time was swept about, a weed in this fury of storm. She was lost, effortless, at death's threshold. But she awoke herself from the nightmare, walked herself about, and reason returned. It was nonsense, unwholesome nonsense. Why, that first time, he was in the library with James and Francis Lingen, his second visit to the house! Why, when she was at the Opera he had been at Peltry with the Mabels. And as for Wycross, he had wired from St. James's in the afternoon, and come on the next day. Absurd--and thank God for it. And poor Francis Lingen! She could afford to laugh at that. Francis Lingen was as capable of kissing the Duchess of Westbury--at whose horrible party she had been the other night--as herself. She felt very safe, and enormously relieved. So much so that she could afford herself the reflection that if hardihood had been all that was wanting, Jimmy Urquhart would have had plenty and to spare. Oh, yes, indeed. But--thank God again--he was a gentleman if ever there was one. Nobody but a gentleman could afford to be so simple in dealing. Having worked all this out, she felt that her feet at least were on solid ground. A spirit of adventure was renewed in her, and a rather unfortunate _contretemps_ provoked it. Before she knew where she was, she was up to the neck, as Urquhart would have said, in a turbid stream.