Cecily had risen, and was standing leaning against the mantelpiece, looking down at her guest with a grave face, touched with involuntary displeasure. “Robert was here a week ago, I believe,” she said, coldly. “He came to see to the opening of the flat, when the servants came back.” “Precisely,” nodded Lady Wilmot. “Now, my dear Cecily, if you will allow me to say so, you have made several grave mistakes in your dealings with Robert. Oh, yes! I was prepared for a dignified expression, and all that sort of thing. It’s just what a woman honestly endeavoring to do her duty must of necessity expect.” At this point in the monologue Rose somewhat hurriedly changed her seat to a position from which her face was not visible to Lady Wilmot. “In the first place,” pursued that lady, “what, in the name of foolishness, induced you, as a married woman of some years’ standing, to allow Philippa Burton to act as your husband’s secretary? In the second, how could you have the stupidity to leave a man like Robert--or for that matter, _any_ man--for three months? Men will be men, and we can’t stop them. We can only be drags on the wheel. You should have stopped at home, my dear, and been a drag. In the third----” Cecily made an impatient movement. “I shall feel much obliged, Lady Wilmot, if you will at once tell me why you have called this afternoon,” she said, very coldly. Lady Wilmot bridled. “With pleasure,” she returned, quite truthfully. “This day week I was driving past these flats on my way home from a bridge party. It was twelve o’clock at night. Twelve o’clock, I know, because----” For a moment or two Cecily lost the thread of Lady Wilmot’s recital. Her attention was fixed upon something else. From her position by the fireplace she commanded the room. Both the other women had their backs turned towards the door; it was, therefore, only she who saw it quietly open, and Philippa Burton appear on the threshold. As she entered, Lady Wilmot was speaking her name.... “Twelve o’clock, when the hall door opened and Philippa Burton came out. I watched her down the road from my carriage window. And now,” she continued, half rising, “having done my duty by you, for which I shall get, as I expected, little thanks, I shall go straight to the Neverns. Gaby and fool as God knows Sammy Nevern to be, I have a respect for his parents, and therefore----” Again Cecily lost the thread of Lady Wilmot’s remarks, continued during the occupation of hunting for a feather boa. Above the heads of the two unconscious women in the room, the eyes of the other two met. In Philippa’s there was agonized supplication. Cecily never knew what prompted her next words. They rose to her lips fluently, and apparently without volition. She was even startled as she heard herself give them utterance. “I have let you go on, Lady Wilmot,” she said in a voice drained of all expression, “though you did not see that Miss Burton was in the room.”