“Well, sometimes I go out of my way to satisfy a whim. It so happens that I have a friend in the detective department at Scotland Yard. I’ve asked him to keep his eye open for me and let me know what he finds out. As soon as he comes to me with any definite information, I’ll share it with you, Lola, you may be sure.” “Oh, thank you, Auntie. That’s very kind of you.” But being unable to force back a tide of color that swept slowly over her, Lola opened a drawer in the dressing table and began to put back the various implements that she had used upon her mistress and herself. To think of it! It was likely, then, that she was to be watched in future and that presently, perhaps, the story of her harmless adventures would become the property of her aunt and her parents, of Treadwell and Simpkins, and that the detective, whom she could picture with a toothbrush moustache and flat feet, would one day march into the rooms of General Sir Peter Chalfont and say to him, “Do you know that your friend Madame de Brézé is a lady’s maid in the employment of the wife of Mr. Fallaray?” With the peculiar satisfaction of one who has succeeded in making some one else extraordinarily uncomfortable, Miss Breezy gathered herself together, scrambled out of the chair which might have belonged to a dentist and left the room like an elderly peahen who had done her duty by the world. And then, having locked the door, Lola returned to the dressing table. “Detective or no detective, I shall dine at the Carlton to-night,” she said to herself. “You see if I don’t.” VI “I want you to meet my sister, one day soon,” said Chalfont. “She’s a good sort. You’ll like her.” “I’m sure I shall,” said Lola. “Will she like _me_?” Chalfont laughed and answered the question with a look of complete admiration. Who could help liking a girl so charming, so frank, so cool, whose love of life was so young and so peculiarly unspoilt? “You would do her good,” he said. “Her husband was killed a week before the armistice. She adored him and is a lonely soul. No children, and will never marry again. She’s looking after my place in Devonshire, buried alive. But I’ve persuaded her to come to London and hook on to things a bit and I’ll bring you together one day next week,—if you’re not going to disappear again. Are you?” Lola shrugged her shoulders. “So far as I know at present, my plans will keep me in town until the end of June.” How could she be more definite than that? So Chalfont had to be satisfied and hope for the best. It was not his habit to drive people into a corner and force confidences. He had told Lola where he was to be found and she had promised to keep in touch with him. That, at any rate, was good. “We haven’t decided where to go to-night,” he said. “Don’t you think we’d better make up our minds?”