“I’ll tell you,” he said less harshly, “you’re a good-looking girl; well, make use of your good looks--get around him, jolly him, get him stuck on you. Make him take you into his confidence. He’ll fall for it. The wisest guys are easy when you know the way.” “Very well,” she said, brightening. It seemed to her that no better way could be devised than to convince Taylor he was wrong. “I will get around him; I will get his confidence. I’ll prove it to you, and I’ll save him.” “But you don’t have to give him your confidence, remember,” Taylor warned her. “Don’t give him the least tip-off, understand. If you can get him out in the garden, I’ll take a chance he has the necklace on him. We’ll nail him there. And don’t forget,” he added significantly, “that I’ve got a little document here with your sister’s name on it. There’s somebody coming,” he whispered, and silently let himself out into the garden. It was Denby who came in. “Hello,” he said, “not dancing, then?” “Hello,” she said, in answer to his greeting. “I don’t like dancing in August.” “I’m fortunate to find you alone,” he said. “You can’t imagine how delightful it is to see you again.” Her manner was particularly charming, he thought, and it gave him a pang when a suspicion of its cause passed over his mind. There had been other women who had sought to wheedle from him secrets that other men desired to know, but they were other women--and this was Ethel Cartwright. “You don’t look as though it is,” she said provocatively. He made an effort to appear as light-hearted as she. “But I am,” he assured her. “It is delightful to see you again.” “It’s no more delightful than for me to see you,” she returned. “Really?” he returned. “Isn’t it curious that when you like people you may not see them for a year, but when you do, you begin just where you left off.” “Where did we leave off?” she demanded with a smile. “Why--in Paris,” he said with a trace of embarrassment. “You don’t want to forget our Paris, I hope?” “Never,” she cried, enthusiastically. “It was there we found that we really were congenial. We are, aren’t we?” “Congenial?” he repeated. “We’re more than that--we’re--” She interrupted him. “And yet, somehow, you’ve changed a lot since Paris.” “For better or for worse?” he asked. She shook her head. “For worse.” He looked at her reproachfully. “Oh, come now, Miss Cartwright, be fair!” “In Paris you used to trust me,” she said. “And you think I don’t now?” he returned. “I’m quite sure you don’t,” she told him. “Why do you say that?” Denby inquired. “There are lots of things,” she answered. “One is that when I asked you why you were here in America, you put me off with some playful excuse about being just an idler.” She looked at him with a vivacious air. “Now didn’t you really come over on an important mission?”