“M’ dear, in the matter of Henry.” “Yes? Has anything happened?” “In the matter of Henry,” said Piggy firmly, “I should say, from his conscious expression, that he had brought it off. Her name is Jane Smith.” “And I mayn’t ask any questions?” “Not one. I just thought you’d better know her name in case she suddenly arrived to stay with you. That’s all. I shall be late.” He rang off. CHAPTER XX It was not till next day that Jane missed her handkerchief. When she reached her room after saying good-bye to Henry she had rolled the serge dress, the wet felt slippers and the damp stockings into a bundle, and pushed them right to the back of her cupboard. She was so sleepy that she hardly knew how she undressed. The instant her head touched the pillow, she slept, a pleasant, dreamless sleep, and only woke with the housemaid’s knock. It was when she was drinking a very welcome cup of tea that she began to wonder whether she was engaged to Henry or not. On the one hand, Henry undoubtedly appeared to think that she was; on the other, Jane felt perfectly satisfied that she had pledged herself to nothing more formidable than a promise to quarrel. A small but very becoming dimple appeared in Jane’s cheek as she came to the conclusion that Henry was possibly engaged to her, but that she was certainly not engaged to Henry. It seemed to her to be a very pleasant state of affairs. It was, in fact, with great reluctance that she transferred her thoughts to more practical matters. Having dressed, she extracted the bundle of clothes from the cupboard, and decided that the serge dress might be hung up. There were one or two damp patches and several green smears, but the former would dry and the latter when dry would brush off. “But the slippers are awful,” she said. They were; the cork soles sopping wet, the felt drenched and slimy. She made a brown paper parcel of them, and put it at the extreme back of the cupboard. The stockings she consigned to the clothes basket. “I can wash them out later on,” she thought. It was at this point that she missed her handkerchief. She had had a handkerchief the night before. She was sure of that, because she remembered drying her eyes with it after she had cried. A little colour came into her face at the recollection of how vehemently she had wept on Henry’s shoulder with Henry’s arm round her, but it died again at the insistently recurring thought: “I had a handkerchief. I dried my eyes with it. Where is it?” Not only had she dried her eyes with it, but after that she remembered scrubbing the finger-tips that had touched the slug. The handkerchief must be horribly smeared and wet. It was one of Renata’s, of course, white with a blue check border, and “R. Molloy, 12” in marking-ink across one corner. Imagine buying twelve horrors like that! Mercifully Renata must have lost most of them, for Jane had only inherited four.