On a day that was a week before the end of that holidays the great new scheme for Rosalie at Field’s rose to its feet and walked. It was a special mission on behalf of the bank. It necessitated.. . . She came once or twice to a bit of a stop like that while waiting their evening talk together in which she should tell Harry. It necessitated a departure from the established order of things; but what of that? Was not the way bill of her life all departures from things established, and all successful, and were not all contingencies of this particular departure fully insured against? She very easily cantered on, on this rein. That bit of a stop was scarcely a check in the progression of her thoughts. Seated with Harry in Harry’s room that night she was about to tell him her great news when, “I’d an unusual offer made to me today,” said Harry. Almost the very words herself had been about to use! “Why so had I to me!” she cried. They both laughed. “Tell on,” said Harry. “No, you. Yours first.” “Toss you,” cried Harry; and spun a coin and lost and went ahead: “Well, mine doesn’t exactly shake the foundations of the world with excitement because I refused it. It was to go out to defend in a big murder case in Singapore!” She exclaimed, “In Singapore!” “Yes, Singapore. Why do you say it like that?” She did not answer. The prisoner, Harry went on, was a wealthy trader, immensely wealthy, and immensely detested, it appeared, by the European settlement; had native blood in his veins; was charged with poisoning an Englishman with whose wife he was supposed to have been carrying on an amour. “A wretched, unsavoury business,” said Harry, and went on to say that, though the fee offered was extraordinarily handsome, he had declined the proposal. It was doubtful he would actually make more money over it than in his normal round at home, more than that it went against the grain to be defending a man of native origins who had pretty obviously seduced a white woman if not murdered her husband. “No, no ticket to Singapore for me, thanks,” said Harry. Rosalie turned to him with a sudden, direct interest. “Harry, suppose you had accepted, how long would you have been away?” “Not less than six months in all. Certainly not less. That’s another point against--” “Yes, against the idea, because in any case you don’t want to go. But suppose the circumstances had been different; suppose it was a case that for various reasons very much attracted you; would you have gone?” Harry said indifferently, “Oh, no doubt, no doubt.” “Although it would have taken you from home six months--or more? You’d not have minded that?” He laughed delightedly. “Ah, ha! I was beginning to wonder what you were driving at. You’re a regular lawyer, Rosalie; you led me on and then caught me out properly.” His amusement was not reflected by her. She said with a certain insistence, “But you wouldn’t have minded?”