It was a sadly depleted staff that he found in the general office. An ancient man and a young boy represented Mr. Philip Slotman’s one-time large clerical staff. “Mr. Slotman’s away, sir, down in the country—gone down to Sussex, sir,” said the lad. “To Sussex? Will he be away long?” “Can’t say, sir; he may be back to-morrow,” the boy said. “At any rate, he’s not here to-day.” “I may come back to-morrow. You might tell him that Mr. Alston called.” And Hugh turned away. Another disappointment. He realised now that he had built up quite a lot of hope on his interview with Slotman. “Shall I wait till to-morrow, or shall I go back to-day?” Hugh wondered. “This is getting awful. I don’t seem to have a mind of my own, I can’t settle down to a thing. I’ve got to get a grip on myself. How does the old poem go: ‘If she be fair, but not fair to me, what care I how fair she be?’ That’s all right; but I do care, and I can’t help it!” He had made his aimless way back to the West End of London. It was luncheon time, and he was hesitating between a restaurant and an hotel. “I’ll go back to the hotel, get some lunch, pack up and leave by the five o’clock train for Hurst Dormer,” he decided, and turned to hail a taxicab. And, turning, he came suddenly face to face with the girl who was ever in his thoughts. She had been helping a middle-aged, pleasant-faced woman out of a cab, and then, as she turned, their eyes met, and into Joan Meredyth’s cheeks there flashed the tell-tale colour that proved to him and to all the world that this chance meeting with him meant something to her after all. CHAPTER XVIII “UNGENEROUS” Hugh Alston had raised his hat, and she had given him the coolest of bows. He was turning away, true to his promise to trouble her no more, and her heart seemed to cry out against it suddenly. If she could have believed that he had been here of deliberate intent, to find her, to see her, she would have felt cold anger against him; but it was an accident, and Joan knew suddenly that for some reason she was unwilling to let him go. What she said she hardly knew, something about the unexpectedness of meetings that were common enough in London. At any rate she spoke, and was rewarded by the look that came into his face. A starving dog could not have looked more gratitude to one who had flung him a bone than Hugh Alston, starving for her, thanked her with his eyes for the few conventional words. Before he could realise what had happened, she had introduced him to her companion. “Helen, this is Mr. Alston—whom I—I know,” she said. “Alston.” Helen Everard congratulated herself afterwards that she had given no sign of surprise, no start, nothing to betray the fact that the name was familiar. Here was the man then whom Lady Linden believed to be Joan’s husband, the man whom Joan had denied she had married, and who she had stated to General Bartholomew was scarcely more than a stranger to her.