Usk spoke fast and somewhat nervously. Maimie read in his face that the night had made no change in his feelings. He was prepared to marry Félicia and keep her in ignorance of her father’s descent, and Mr Steinherz was well pleased with his decision. Maimie felt that she hated them both. “By the way,” said Mr Steinherz, “I guess I am in Félicia’s black books yet?” Maimie nodded, for she had left Félicia comfortably established in her room, with no intention of showing herself for the present. “Well, we lunch Lord Usk to-day, and he would be real sorry to miss her. Do you happen to know anything she wants right now?” “Why, I guess one of those gold girdles with turquoise bosses would fix up her new Paris tea-gown to perfection,” said Maimie slowly, adding vengefully to herself, as she saw Usk redden, “I won’t let you down easy this time, Pappa Steinherz--talking that way about Fay before her best young man!” “Then maybe you’ll intimate that I’m bringing along something of the sort when you get back,” said Mr Steinherz. “Why, certainly. I guess you’ll find Regent Street the best place,” cried Maimie, as the cab moved on. It was some satisfaction to her to see the disappointment on Usk’s face. “He’s death on getting it over,” she said to herself; “and now Mr Steinherz will have him trail half-way round London before coming in.” But her satisfaction was dashed with dismay when she remembered again the pair of dainty high-heeled slippers still reposing in her satchel. How could she account to Félicia for the morning which was to have been devoted to changing them? If she refused to give an explanation, or offered a lame one, she knew Félicia would never rest until she had solved the mystery. And if she guessed that Maimie did not wish Mr Steinherz to know what she had been doing, she would appeal to him sooner than allow herself to be foiled. There was a relentless malevolence about Félicia on these occasions, when Maimie was trying to deceive her purely for her own good, which Maimie felt deeply. “I don’t dare go back without changing them,” she sighed to herself, and standing up, began an agitated colloquy with the driver. “Can you get back to the City from here, hackman, right away?” she asked him. “There’s something I have forgotten.” The man asked where she wanted to go, and then opined that the shop could easily be reached by way of Holborn. He turned at the first opportunity, and as they approached the corner Maimie caught sight of Mr Steinherz and Usk a second time, looking at some books in a shop-window. They had not gone far towards Regent Street, and Maimie laughed to herself as she thought of Usk’s impatience. When she looked round again, her attention was attracted by a man standing on the pavement at the corner, who was gazing--glaring was the word that occurred to her--across the street at the bookshop opposite. He was elderly and poorly dressed, and evidently a foreigner, with a ragged beard and unkempt hair.