“You’ve wrecked and ruined my life,” the pretty virago went on, “with your interference, and after all the work I’ve done! After all them--I mean those hours I’ve spent with his lordship workin’ at the treasure an’ he told me I was the most helpful secretary he’d ever had.…” He let her talk herself to a sobbing incoherence. “All this may be true,” he said soothingly, “and probably is. The point is, your presence here is a little--indelicate.” Seeing her look round over her shoulder as she was talking, he had taken a quick survey of the ruins, expecting to discover that she had a companion. But there was nobody in sight. The ground sloped steeply from where he stood to the little Ravensrill, the broad brook which had for a thousand years marked the boundary of the manor. Unless somebody was concealed behind the fallen masonry she was alone. “I suppose you want me to clear out now,” she gulped, and he inclined his head. “I will walk with you to Fontwell Cutting--that is the nearest way to the village,” he said, and she was too much occupied with her manufactured misery to resent his offer. What had she been doing in the Abbey ruins so early in the morning? He knew that it was useless to ask her. As they passed down the steep path to the road she spoke over her shoulder. “I wouldn’t marry him for a million pounds!” she said viciously. “He is going to marry Leslie Gwyn, isn’t he? I wish him joy!” “I will convey your kind message,” he said ironically, an indiscreet rejoinder, for it roused the devil in her. “Mind he doesn’t lose her, that’s all!” she screamed. “I know! Everybody knows! You want her money too--the Second Son’s in love with her--that’s a nice lookout for Harry Chelford!” He sat swinging his legs over the edge of the bluff, watching her till she was out of sight. Everybody knew that he loved Leslie Gwyn! And only at that moment he knew it himself! VI In all the City of London there was perhaps no office more elegant than that in which Mr. Arthur Gwyn spent his leisurely business hours. It was a large room, panelled in white wood, with pink-shaded wall brackets of frosted silver. Its floor was covered with a deep rose carpet into which the feet sank as into an old lawn; and such furnishing as the room held was of the most costly description. Visitors and clients who had business with this dainty lawyer were warned not to smoke in his sacred presence. The windows were doubled to keep out the noises of Holborn; there were exterior sun blinds to exclude the fugitive rays of pale sunlight which occasionally bathed the City; and long velvet curtains, in harmony with the carpet, to shut out the horrid world that roared and palpitated outside Mr. Gwyn’s exquisite chamber. In this room was a faint aroma of roses--he was partial to the more expensive varieties of perfume, and had a standing order with the best of the Grasse houses.