Loveman had been gone no more than fifteen minutes, and Mary was thinking upon her plans, balancing this prospect against that danger, when her telephone began to ring. She took it up, and to her dismay the voice that greeted her over the wire was the voice of Jack’s father. His first words she did not hear at all--her senses were almost wholly concentrated in dismay that two of the persons from whom she had sought seclusion had within a single hour learned of her whereabouts! How soon before all would be about her again? “How did you learn where I am?” she asked automatically. “Why, you called me up awhile ago, and said Mrs. Grayson wanted to speak to me,” he replied. “When I tried to answer, you had hung up. But Central located the telephone the call had come from.” Mr. Morton went on to ask to see her at once--anyhow, not later than luncheon. She considered whether she should see him again, after her admission of her liaison with Jack, after that orchid-smothered invitation to a voyage in tropical waters--or should she evade him by once more running away? But running away would mean the abandonment of her plans involving Maisie Jones--and that she could not do. Besides, at the best she would only delay the meeting with Mr. Morton; the meeting itself was inevitable. While her lips replied to him, her mind considered rapidly. Should she see him alone--or in public? Only by a solitary meeting could she reduce the ever-present danger of accident prematurely revealing her identity to him; but a solitary meeting, in view of what he supposed to be her character, might prompt him to make open advances of a sort suggested by his perfumed invitation--which advances she dared neither permit nor too bluntly repel. And then she thought of what might be a way out--the small Japanese Room just off one of the large dining-rooms: this would give her the protection of both privacy and publicity. She suggested it to Mr. Morton, and he promptly said he would reserve the room and would meet her at half-past twelve. “Please remember this,” she ended,--“here at the Grantham I am known as Mrs. Gardner.” She slipped down shortly after twelve, to avoid the danger of recognition by any one in the crowd of lunchers who would come in a little later. But as she passed through a hallway on the main floor, she glimpsed a square figure behind a newspaper--Bradley. She went on without pause and slipped into the Japanese Room. So Bradley, too, had learned of her whereabouts!