“I think, in the circumstances, I’ll please myself what I tell you,” she said with a dangerous quietness. “It might be more to the point if you told me what you’ve done with the money entrusted to you. Six years, Aunt Agatha? That was three years after I came here. . . . You were always making trips abroad, and kept me on at school as long as you could. . . . Weren’t you in Africa six years ago? You were away a long time, I remember——” “That will do,” said Miss Girton harshly. “Will it?” asked the girl. If her aunt had been tearful and frightened, Patricia would have been ready to comfort her, but weakness was not one of Miss Girton’s failings, and her aggressively impenitent manner could provoke nothing but resentment. A storm was perilously near when an interruption came in the shape of a ring at the front door. Miss Girton went to answer it, and Patricia heard in the hall the spluttering of an agitated Algy. In a moment the immaculate Mr. Lomas-Coper himself came into the drawing-room. “Why, there you are!” he gasped fatuously, as if he could scarcely believe his eyes. “And, I say!—what? Been bird’s-nestin’ in your party frock!” And Algy stood goggling through his monocle at the girl’s disarray. “Looks like it, doesn’t it?” she smiled, though inwardly she was cursing the arrival of another person to whom explanations would have to be made. “Aunt Agatha simply sagged when she saw me.” “I should think so!” said Algy. “What happened to the eggs? Tell me all about it.” “But what have you come here in such a flurry for?” she countered. Mr. Lomas-Coper gaped, groping feebly in the air. “But haven’t you heard? Of course not—I forgot to tell you. You know we’re next door to old Bittle? Well, there’s been no end of a shindy. Lots of energetic souls whooflin’ round the garden, yellin’ blue murder, an’ all Bittle’s pack of maneatin’ hounds howlin’ their heads off. So old Algy goes canterin’ round for news, thinks of you, and comes rampin’ along to see if you’ve heard anything about it an’ find out if you’d like to totter along to the Château Bittle an’ join the game. And here you are, lookin’ as if you’d been in the thick of it yourself. Doocid priceless! Eh? What? What?” He beamed, full of an impartial good humour, and not at all abashed by the unenthusiastic reception of his brilliance. Miss Girton stood over by the settee, lighting a fresh gasper from the wilting stump of the last, a rugged and gaunt and inscrutable woman. Patricia was suddenly glad of the arrival of Algy. Although a fool, he was a friend: as a fool, he would be easily put off with any facile explanation of her dishevelment, and as a friend he was an unlooked-for straw to be caught at in the turmoil that had flooded the girl’s life that night. “Sit down, Algy,” she pleaded tolerantly. “And for Heaven’s sake don’t stare at me like that. There’s nothing wrong.”