"He discussed my merits before we met at the duchess's, I presume?" "Yes. As I had not at that time the honour of your acquaintance, I took but little heed of the conversation." She looked at him with a covert glance, and with her fingers turned one of her rings round and round in a quick, nervous way. What, she was wondering, had Colonel Murray-Kerr said about her? The fact that she had been discussed by him was to her extremely disconcerting. "Well," she exclaimed a moment later, with a forced laugh, "as long as your friend did not speak ill of me, I suppose I ought not to complain of having my personal points openly discussed! Most smart women court the publicity of a smoking-room discussion." "Yes," he replied in a hard voice, wondering whether her words were directed against Claudia, "unfortunately they do. But there are smart women and smart women. I trust, Miss Mortimer, that you have no desire to develop into one of the latter." "Certainly not," she answered in all earnestness. Half rising, she put her hand into her dress pocket, ostensibly to obtain her handkerchief, but in reality to place there a small piece of paper which she had crushed into her palm and held concealed when Dudley entered. Her deft movement as she hid the paper was so swift that it entirely escaped his notice, while at the same moment Claudia, accompanied by two of the male guests, came into the library, thus putting an end to their _tete-a-tete_. Dudley, still standing before the burning logs, continued chatting to Sir Henry's ward, but, owing to the arrival of his other guests, it was no longer possible to keep the conversation in the same channel. As he sat at dinner he could not prevent his eyes from wandering across to Muriel and from allowing strange thoughts to flit through his mind. At what had the colonel hinted in that very room months ago, when he had warned him to beware of her? He knew Murray-Kerr to be an easy-going cosmopolitan, whose acquaintance with diplomatic Europe was perhaps more extensive than that of any other living man, yet what possible object could he have had in urging him to be careful when he met that innocent-looking woman scarcely out of her teens? Why Claudia had invited a woman who might become her rival in his affections was another enigma which was puzzling. There was some distinct object in this policy, but its real nature he was quite unable to fathom.