While they lunched Hal chatted of many things, but she noted that Lorraine was looking thin, and seemed to have something on her mind, while she made no attempt to eat what was placed on her plate. When she was pulling her gloves on later she asked: “Why don’t you take a week’s holiday and go into the country, Lorry?… It is no use going on until you are ill, as you did before.” “I think I must ask about it. I feel as if one week would do me a world of good. How is Sir Edwin? Have you seen him lately?” “We played golf on Saturday.” A white look came suddenly into Hal’s face, and she riveted her attention on an apparently tiresome fastener as she asked, with the greatest show of unconcern she could muster, the question that brought her there. “Have you heard a rumour that he is going to marry Miss Bootes?” naming one of the richest heiresses of the day. “No; I hadn’t heard it.” Lorraine gave a quick glance at her face, but saw only the look of concentration on the fractious fastener. “Well,” Hal said in level tones, “I suppose she is worth about half a million, and I don’t think he is rich.” “Probably he has only been seen speaking to her, or taking her to supper at a big reception. That would be quite enough to make some people link them at once, and fix the date of the wedding.” “There’s a bun-fight at the Bruces’ tonight,” Hal ran on, “with Llaney to play the violin, and Lascelles to sing—quite an elaborate affair: so it is sure to be very boring; but I suppose Alymer will be there, looking adorably beautiful, and all the women gazing at him. It will be entertaining to chaff him, anyhow.” “Well, don’t tell him you found me weeping,” with a little laugh. “He might not realise it was only nerves.” “I’ll tell him he’s to take you away for a week’s holiday,” Hal replied lightly. “Goodness knows, you’ve done enough for him.” She went back to the office and settled down to her work with resolute determination, but any one who knew her well would have seen that some cloud seemed to have descended upon her, and that all the time she stuck to her work she was wrestling to appear normal, in the face of some enshrouding worry. Through all the letter she was writing, and over the proofs she read to aid the chief, there seemed to be one sentence dancing in letters of glee, like a war-dance executed by little black devils on the foolscap of her mind. It was last night she had heard it, that ominous piece of news that took her violently by surprise, in spite of her practical common sense. Some one had said it quite casually in the motor bus—one man to another, as an item of news of the day. “They say Sir Edwin Crathie is to marry Miss Bootes the heiress.” “What! The Right Honourable Sir Edwin Crathie?” “So they say. He’s very heavily in debt, I believe—over some bad speculations—and an heiress is about the only thing to float him. Besides, the party wants rich men, and it would be a good move on his part.”