This last bit of advice was sound, but far from easy to follow. The more I thought it over—as we posted those fifty odd miles, by Audley End, Bishop Stortford, Broxbourne and Tottenham, from Cambridge up to town—the more clearly I saw how greatly the fact of my having already called in the help of a detective increased the difficulty of my seeing Mademoiselle Fédore and demanding the explanation Hartover desired. Could I do so without taking Inspector Lavender into my confidence regarding Hartover’s discovery? And could I take Lavender into my confidence without curtailing my own freedom of action and inviting a public exposure of Fédore which must be abhorrent to the dear boy? Here, indeed, was a problem hard of solution! Still it appeared an integral part of the whole, and to the whole I had pledged myself. I must be guided, therefore, by circumstance, dealing with each new phase of this very complicated affair as it presented itself; keeping, meantime, as cool a head and quiet a mind as might be. To meet danger half-way may be less an act of prudence than a waste of energy. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof—and the good thereof likewise, if a man has faith to believe so. We were to dine on the way, and to reach the great house in Grosvenor Square between nine and ten o’clock. There, as I learned from Hartover, he still—when he pleased—occupied a set of rooms upon the ground floor, with a private entrance from the side street, which I well remembered. ‘It isn’t that I have any particular love for being under the family roof,’ he told me. ‘But I saw the Rusher wanted to oust me and collar those rooms for himself, and I did not choose to have it. So I stuck to them. Her Magnificence couldn’t give me notice to quit without appealing to my father, and she really had not the face for that. There are limits to even her audacity! Now she and I are like buckets in a well. When she arrives, I depart and take up my abode elsewhere. Quarrelled with her? Good Lord, no. She is the most impossible person to quarrel with on the face of the earth. As slippery as an eel—I beg your pardon, a mermaid, shall we say? It does sound more polite. But hold her you can’t. She slithers through your fingers, in that fascinating, mocking, laughing way of hers—you know it?’ Did I not?⸺ ‘And leaves you, feeling like every sort of fool, cursing, most consumedly, both her and yourself.’ He laughed not quite pleasantly. ‘But, the devil helping me, Brownlow, I’ll be even with her some day yet. When my father dies—always supposing I survive him, which quite conceivably I shall not—her Magnificence and I will square accounts. It’ll be a little scene worth witnessing. I hope, dear old man, you may be present!’