Very wisely, Leslie did not pursue the subject. She too had heard that Lord Raytham had carried into married life a loose string or two that was substantially attached and which he was unwilling or unable to drop. Leslie was too versed in the ways of the world to be shocked at this; too sophisticated to be anything but mildly amused at the inefficiency of man, who finds it so easy to get rid of a wife and so difficult to discharge a feminine attachment. “Your name is Leslie, isn’t it?” And, when she nodded: “I wonder if you would mind my ‘Leslie-ing’ you? You’re not so formidable as I thought. I--I rather like you. My name is Jane--if you ever feel friendly enough to ‘Jane’ me--I’ve been abominably rude to you, but now I’ve come to ask you for favours.” Leslie laughed. “I owe you an apology,” she said, and the other woman was quick to see her meaning. “About Druze? It would be a beastly idea, only--women are such queer fools, aren’t they? No, I knew Druze was a woman; that made everything so hideous. I wonder if you will believe me when I say that that was almost my heaviest cross--almost.” “What was really the heaviest?” asked Leslie quietly. Lady Raytham fetched a long sigh and looked out of the window. “I don’t know. It is rather difficult to compare these things.” And then, quickly: “Of course, I know now which is the heaviest, but that is so new and so crushing that I dare not let myself think about it. Something Druze said to me before she went out; something she told me that froze my blood.” She closed her eyes and shuddered, but recovered instantly. “That is why I got my car and went in search of her. She told me a little but not everything, and I had to know! My first thought was--you’ll think I’m a hypocrite--that Peter had killed her. If I thought at all! I don’t think I cared. I had only one idea in my mind, to find something she had boasted about.” “Not the necklace?” Jane Raytham smiled contemptuously. “The necklace! As if I cared for that! I’m making a clean breast of everything--up to a point. The necklace you saw at the house last night was only----” “Was a copy, I know that,” said Leslie quietly. “An exact replica of the real emerald chain, and, valueless! When you didn’t bother to put it back in the safe, I guessed.” Eye met eye, each striving to read the other’s thoughts. “What else did you guess?” asked Jane Raytham, after a long silence, and then: “No, no, don’t tell me. I want to feel that nobody knows that--nobody! You will tell me that I am trying to create a fool’s paradise myself, and I’m a moral coward. I wonder if I am.” And then, obliquely: “Have you seen Peter?” “I saw him last night, yes. He knew nothing about the murder--not so much as you,” said Leslie. The woman ignored this challenge. “I wonder how much you do know, Leslie?” It was a strain to ask the question. Even as she had her reservations, so also had Leslie Maughan. The truth must come from Jane Raytham or not be truth at all.