But she turned away quickly, obeyed orders without a single question and ran up the wide staircase blindly, because, for the moment, her eyes were filled with tears. But only for the moment. After all, there was nothing in this visit that could help her scheme along. She must keep her courage and her nerve, continue her course of study, watch her opportunities and be ready to seize the real chance when it presented itself. Lady Feo was bored,—which, of course, was a crime. Macquarie was a false coin. Lola could have told her that. How many exactly similar men had ogled her in the street and attempted to capture her attention. She had been amazed to see him join Lady Feo at Paddington station that morning. She instantly put him down as a counter jumper from a second-rate linen draper’s in the upper reaches of Oxford Street.—She was ready for Feo when she came up to put on her hat. Her deft fingers had worked quickly, and she was alert and bright, in spite of her huge disappointment. It was characteristic of Feo to break up her houseparty with the most unscrupulous disregard for the convenience of the other members of it, and to care nothing for the fact that she would spoil the pleasure of her father. He and her brother, her little friend, Mrs. Malwood, and the two disappointing men must pay her bill. She never paid. It was characteristic of her, also, to turn her mind quickly, before leaving, upon some other way of obtaining amusement, as she dreaded to face a dull and barren Sunday in London. She remembered suddenly that Penelope Winchfield, one of the “gang,” had opened her house near Aylesbury, which was only a short drive from Princes Risborough. It was a brain wave. So she went to the telephone and rang up, invited herself for the week-end and went finally into the car and slipped away with Lola without saying good-by to a single person. “How I hate this place,” she said. “Something always goes wrong here.” And she turned and made a face at the old building like a naughty child. Any other woman—at any rate, any other woman whose upbringing had been as harum-scarum as Feo’s—would have given Lola her notice and dropped her like an old shoe. But she had humor. V Queen’s Road, Bayswater, so far as the jeweler’s little shop was concerned, was in for a surprise that evening. Just as Lola’s mother was about to close up after a rather depressing day which had brought very little business—a few wrist watches to be attended to, nothing more—a car drove up, and from it descended Lola, carrying a handbag and smiling like a girl let out of school. “Why, my dear,” cried Mrs. Breezy, “what does this mean? I thought you were going to Chilton Park.” But she held her ewe lamb warmly and gladly in her arms, while a shout of welcome came from behind the glass screen where the fat man sat with the microscope in his eye.