"The most disagreeable thing that ever happened to me in my life. You don't know what it is to be really afraid. I didn't until a fellow came up to me at the club and asked me if I had seen the detectives. Fear is a terrible thing, Rodney; there is nothing so demoralising as fear. You know my staid old club of black mahogany and low ceilings, where half a dozen men sit dining and talking about hunting and two-year-olds. There is a man in that club who has asked me for the last ten years what I am going to do with my two-year-olds. He cannot remember that I never had a two-year-old. But that night he wasn't tipsy, and his sobriety impressed me; he sat down at my table, and after a while he leaned across and asked me if I knew that two detectives had been asking after me. 'You had better look to this. These things turn out devilish unpleasantly. Of course there is nothing wrong, but you don't want to appear in the police court,' he said." "Had she told?" "She was more frightened than I was when I told her what had happened, but she had done the mischief nevertheless. She had written to her people saying that she had met a friend of Mr. Rodney, and that he was looking after her, and that he lived in Berkeley Square; she was quite simple and truthful, and notwithstanding my fear I was sorry for her, for we might have gone away together somewhere, but, of course, that was impossible now; her folly left no course open to me except to go to Dublin and explain everything to her parents." "I don't see," said Rodney, "that there was anything against you."