Miss Keane covered her face with her hands for a few seconds, and when she took them away, he could see that tears were slowly trickling down her cheeks. "Heaven knows, Mr Spencer, I don't. My cousin is a strange woman. She is fond of gaiety, of excitement. She asks people about whom she knows nothing to her flat, I think," she added with an hysterical laugh; "she fancies she is making herself a queen of Society. If she can get her rooms full that is all she wants. When she does that, she fancies herself the Duchess." "I think I understand," said Spencer gravely. "And I take it you would give heaven and earth to get out of this environment?" "If you only knew how I loathe it," she cried, in a fervent tone. "Sometimes I think I would rather run away and be a shopgirl or a waitress, to get rid of this horrible atmosphere." Guy Spencer was very perturbed. He rose and walked up and down the room--it was his habit to walk about, even in confined spaces, when he was in an emotional mood. At length he turned, and faced her squarely. "Look here, Miss Keane. It's rather nonsense talking about being a waitress or a shopgirl. You told me you had a small income saved from the wreck. How much is it? I am asking in no spirit of impertinent curiosity. I have a reason for asking." She hesitated for a moment before she replied: "Something like a hundred a year--paid to me quarterly by my cousin, Mr Dutton, who is my trustee." "Then you are not exactly a pauper. Shopgirls and waitresses don't earn that." "But it would help," said Miss Keane, in a stifled voice. "A hundred a year does not go far; with clothes and everything." He longed to take her in his arms there and then and ask her to be his wife, so far was he subjugated by her subtle fascination. But certain things occurred to him. He thought of his old ancestry, his uncle whose heir he would be, even a faint idea of his cousin Nina flashed through his mind. What would his relatives say to a marriage like that, the marriage with a girl, however beautiful, picked up in a flat, owned by a woman of good family but doubtful reputation? But he could not afford to lose her. He was rich, he could indulge any passing whim. Out of his new-born ideas he spoke. "Miss Keane, I am very interested in you. Will you agree to look upon me as a friend?" She looked up at him from under downcast eyes. "Mr Spencer, somehow I have always looked upon you as a friend, as something different from the ordinary man I meet in a place like this." "You want to get out of this atmosphere, away from your card-playing cousin, who cannot keep her parties free from disgraceful scandals." "I have told you how fervently I long to say good-bye to it all." Spencer had made up his mind as to what he was going to do. It was quixotic, but then he was a quixotic person. And, anyway, he was marking time. He would ask her to marry him in the end, but, at the moment, he did not clearly see his way to do so.