"She might have remembered that I was alone," she thought, a little wistfully as she opened the door of the waiting-room. Lord Watergate advanced to meet her, and they shook hands gravely. She had not seen him since the night of the _conversazione_ at the Berkeley Galleries. His ample presence seemed to fill the little room. "It is a shame," he said, "to come down upon you at this time of night." She laid Phyllis's note on the table, and turned to him with a smile of deprecation. "Won't you read your letter before we embark on the question of slides?" "Thank you. I will just open it." She broke the seal, advanced to the lamp, and cast her eye hastily over the letter. But something in the contents seemed to rivet her attention, to merit more than a casual glance. For some moments she stood absorbed in the carelessly-written sheet; then, suddenly, an exclamation of sorrow and astonishment burst from her lips. Lord Watergate advanced towards her. "Miss Lorimer, you are in some trouble. Can I help you, or shall I go away?" She looked up, half-bewildered, into the strong and gentle face. Then realising nothing, save that here was a friendly human presence, put the letter into his hand. This is what he read. "MY DEAR GERTY,--This is to tell you that I am not coming home to-night--am not coming home again at all, in fact. I am going to marry Mr. Darrell, who will take me to Italy, where the weather is decent, and where I shall get well. For you know, I am horribly seedy, Gerty, and very dull. "Of course you will be angry with me; you never liked Sidney, and you will think it ungrateful of me, perhaps, to go off like this. But oh, Gerty, it has been so dismal, especially since we heard about poor little Frank. Sidney hates a fuss, and so do I. We both of us prefer to go off on the Q.T., as Fred says. With love from "PHYLLIS." As Lord Watergate finished this characteristic epistle, an exclamation more fraught with horror than Gertrude's own burst from his lips. He strode across the room, crushing the paper in his hands. "Lord Watergate!" Gertrude faced him, pale, questioning: a nameless dread clutched at her. Something in her face struck him. Stopping short in front of her, in tones half paralysed with horror, he said-- "Don't you know?" "Do I know?" she echoed his words, bewildered. "Darrell is married. He does not live with his wife; but it is no secret." The red tables and chairs, the lamp, Lord Watergate himself, whose voice sounded fierce and angry, were whirling round Gertrude in hopeless confusion; and then suddenly she remembered that this was an old story; that she had known it always, from the first moment when she had looked upon Darrell's face.