And there wasn't. Hippisley had grown out of models just as he had grown out of cheap Burgundy. And he'd left the stage, because he was tired of it, so there was, mercifully, no danger from that quarter. What she dreaded was the moment when he'd "take" to writing again, for then he'd have to have a secretary. Also she was jealous of his writing because it absorbed more of his attention than his painting, and exhausted him more, left her less of him. And that year, their third year, he flung up his painting and was, as she expressed it, "at it" again. Worse than ever. And he wanted a secretary. She took care to find him one. One who wouldn't be dangerous. "You should just see her, Roly." She brought her in to tea one day for me to look at and say whether she would "do." I wasn't sure--what can you be sure of?--but I could see why Lena thought she would. She was a little unhealthy thing, dark and sallow and sulky, with thin lips that showed a lack of temperament, and she had a stiffness and preciseness, like a Board School teacher--just that touch of "commonness" which Lena relied on to put him off. She wore a shabby brown skirt and a yellowish blouse. Her name was Ethel Reeves. Lena had secured safety, she said, in the house. But what was the good of that, when outside it he was going about everywhere with Sybil Fermor? She came and told me all about it, with a sort of hope that I'd say something either consoling or revealing, something that she could go on. "_You_ know him, Roly," she said. I reminded her that she hadn't always given me that credit. "_I_ know how he spends his time," she said. "How do you know?" "Well, for one thing, Ethel tells me." "How does she know?" "She--she posts the letters." "Does she read them?" "She needn't. He's too transparent." "Lena, do you use her to spy on him?" I said. "Well," she retorted, "if he uses her--" I asked her if it hadn't struck her that Sybil Fermor might be using him? "Do you mean--as a _paravent_? Or," she revised it, "a parachute?" "For Bertie Granville," I elucidated. "A parachute, by all means." She considered it. "It won't work," she said. "If it's her reputation she's thinking of, wouldn't Norry be worse?" I said that was the beauty of him, if Letty Granville's attention was to be diverted. "Oh, Roly," she said, "do you really think it's that?" I said I did, and she powdered her nose and said I was a dear and I'd bucked her up no end, and went away quite happy. Letty Granville's divorce suit proved to her that I was right.