"Ah! I see I’ve got a new parlour-maid, eh?" he laughed merrily. "And an unusually smart one, too!" Marigold laughed, and set the table, saying: "Well, I thought I’d just give auntie a hand, Mr. Boyne. Half an hour ago she complained that her leg hurt, because of the stairs, so I thought I’d help her." "Very good of you," he said, lounging in the frayed old arm-chair in his shirt-sleeves, a different figure indeed from that he so often presented at night in the West End. There, in the smart restaurants and in theatres, he wore his evening suit and nodded acquaintance with many well-known people, who little suspected his obscure abode. Marigold waited upon him as though she were a waitress instead of a ledger clerk, but he was reading the evening paper as he ate his meal, and spoke but little more. "Yes, you’re a pretty miss, you are!" he growled to himself after she had left the room. "If you don’t mind you’ll be very sorry that you entered my house." At a quarter to nine, having washed and changed into a rather seedy suit of blue serge, he went out. Marigold heard him bang the door, and knew that Gerald was on the alert outside. The evening passed quietly until at ten Mrs. Felmore went to bed, and her niece also retired. She bade her aunt good-night, went into the spare room and closed the door. She shook out her thin summer dressing-gown, and placed it upon the rail of the narrow bed. Then she reopened the door and stood listening on the stairs, her ears strained to catch any noise from the locked room on the next landing of the frowsy old house. No sound reached her ears, save the noise her aunt made moving about in her room. Downstairs the cheap old clock in Boyne’s sitting-room ticked loudly and suddenly struck the half-hour. Beyond that all was silent. Marigold, after a long vigil, at last turned off the gas and, throwing herself on the bed, dressed as she was, soon fell asleep. Meanwhile Boyne re-entered the house noiselessly and, taking off his shoes, crept in silence up the stairs to her door. He listened, and could hear by her deep, regular breathing that she was asleep. Slowly he turned the handle of the door—which he had purposely oiled before going out—and, flashing a pocket-torch to the ceiling, saw her lying there, still dressed! Without a sound he withdrew and crept back down the stairs. "I thought so, young lady!" he muttered to himself, when he was back in his sitting-room. "You don’t know much—neither does your young man! But I must take steps for my own protection, that I can see!" He stood with his back to the fireplace, his eyes staring at the sideboard in front of him for some moments. Nibby was scuttling about in the cupboard, so he let him out and the little rodent sniffed his hand. "I wonder what makes the girl so inquisitive?" he thought. "Surely the old woman knows nothing! If she does, then she would, of course, confide in her niece, who, in turn, would tell this young fellow Durrant."