He had covered her with his smile, but she continued grave. "I'm not half so much afraid when you're nasty." "Thank you! What then did you do," he asked, "with my note?" "You deserve that I should have spread it out on my dressing-table--or left it, better still, in Maud Blessingbourne's room." He wondered while he laughed. "Oh but what does SHE deserve?" It was her gravity that continued to answer. "Yes--it would probably kill her." "She believes so in you?" "She believes so in YOU. So don't be TOO nice to her." He was still looking, in the chimney-glass, at the state of his beard--brushing from it, with his handkerchief, the traces of wind and wet. "If she also then prefers me when I'm nasty it seems to me I ought to satisfy her. Shall I now at any rate see her?" "She's so like a pea on a pan over the possibility of it that she's pulling herself together in her room." "Oh then we must try and keep her together. But why, graceful, tender, pretty too--quite or almost as she is--doesn't she re-marry?" Mrs. Dyott appeared--and as if the first time--to look for the reason. "Because she likes too many men." It kept up his spirits. "And how many MAY a lady like--?" "In order not to like any of them too much? Ah that, you know, I never found out--and it's too late now. When," she presently pursued, "did you last see her?" He really had to think. "Would it have been since last November or so?--somewhere or other where we spent three days." "Oh at Surredge? I know all about that. I thought you also met afterwards." He had again to recall. "So we did! Wouldn't it have been somewhere at Christmas? But it wasn't by arrangement!" he laughed, giving with his forefinger a little pleasant nick to his hostess's chin. Then as if something in the way she received this attention put him back to his question of a moment before: "Have you kept my note?" She held him with her pretty eyes. "Do you want it back?" "Ah don't speak as if I did take things--!" She dropped her gaze to the fire. "No, you don't; not even the hard things a really generous nature often would." She quitted, however, as if to forget that, the chimney-place. "I put it THERE!" "You've burnt it? Good!" It made him easier, but he noticed the next moment on a table the lemon-coloured volume left there by Mrs. Blessingbourne, and, taking it up for a look, immediately put it down. "You might while you were about it have burnt that too." "You've read it?" "Dear yes. And you?" "No," said Mrs. Dyott; "it wasn't for me Maud brought it." It pulled her visitor up. "Mrs. Blessingbourne brought it?" "For such a day as this." But she wondered. "How you look! Is it so awful?" "Oh like his others." Something had occurred to him; his thought was already far. "Does she know?" "Know what?" "Why anything." But the door opened too soon for Mrs. Dyott, who could only murmur quickly--"Take care!" CHAPTER II