Moved by a sudden impulse, Clodagh leant forward in her seat and clasped her hands. As on the day in Florence--the day when she had written her letter to Laurence Asshlin--her soul thirsted for confession. After two long years of silent thought, the temptation to open her heart in speech was overmastering. The room was comfortable, dimly lighted, almost homelike; the hour was propitious; her hostess's voice was extraordinarily kind. She stole one half-shy, half-eager glance at the averted face. "Lady Frances," she said suddenly, "I was very childish, very foolish, that time in Venice. I knew it even before I--before I left." With extreme tact, Lady Frances refrained from looking at her. Smoking quietly, she made her next remark in a low, reassuring voice. "Then that was why you left so suddenly?" "That was why." "Walter Gore must have been very eloquent!" Lady Frances spoke in the same even tone; but, as she felt the thrill of surprise with which Clodagh received her words, she turned quickly and decisively, and met her startled eyes. "I always knew that Walter Gore went back with you to your hotel on that last night," she said. "I always knew that he read you a very moral lecture." Clodagh drew a quick breath. "But how did you know?" Lady Frances studied her face for a moment; then she gave a direct answer to the question put to her. "Walter himself told me," she said. After she had spoken there was silence in the room. On her part it was the silence of the experimenter, who has taken a step in a new direction and is waiting for results; on Clodagh's, it was the silence of incredulity, of doubt, of dread. That Gore should have spoken of that last night in Venice to any third person was a circumstance that, at very least, needed explanation. She sat breathlessly waiting that explanation. During the moment of fruitful silence Lady Frances Hope remained very still, fingering her cigarette, drawing in fitful puffs of smoke, avoiding with elaborate carelessness any observation of her companion's manner. Then, as if some psychological crisis for which she was waiting had been achieved, she altered her position and her expression; and, turning, laid her hand upon Clodagh's. "Dear Mrs. Milbanke," she said, "I am glad all this has happened; I am glad we have met. You are at a moment in your life when you need a friend--a friend who understands----" Her fingers tightened upon Clodagh's in a warm, sympathetic pressure. "You are young; you are free; you have the whole world at your feet. Don't spoil your life by taking it too seriously! "When I was your age, or only a little older than you, I was left a widow--as you have been left; but I was unlike you in one particular: I had a very wise and far-seeing mother to help me with her advice. Do you know what her advice was?" Clodagh sat silent.