She felt glad that she had encouraged Lord Lullworth, the exponent of a cult that admitted of no compromise. With him she was at least safe. For obvious reasons, he could never cause her to feel such disappointment as she felt at the conduct of Guy Overton and at the conduct of Owen Glendower Richmond. When one is in the presence of a man who promptly avows himself a brigand one is never surprised if one feels a tug at one’s purse. The surprise and the sorrow come only when one is in the company of a professional moralist and detects him trying to wheedle one’s handkerchief out of one’s pocket. By the time she had reached the Brompton Road Amber Severn was feeling very strongly that the companionship of professed brigands was much to be preferred to the association with philosophers who talked of disinterested friendship while in the act of pocketing your silver spoons. An avowed lover was, she was sure, infinitely safer than a man who carries Plato in his breast pocket and presses his hand upon it while he makes a glib proposal of marriage to every girl he meets. CHAPTER XXX Amber had been dwelling so much upon her philosophy and its development that she half hoped that Josephine was not at home: there was just a possibility that if Josephine was not at home, she, Amber, would get back to her own home in time to give Lord Lullworth a cup of tea on his return with the matched silks for her mother. She was therefore slightly disappointed to learn that Miss West was at home and in the drawing-room with her ladyship. Josephine was paler than Amber had ever seen her, and she was certainly colder than she had ever known her. She scarcely made any response to Amber’s long kiss. Resignation--that was the word which came to Amber’s mind when she held her friend by both hands and looked at her. She was a statue--a marble statue of Resignation. The worst might come; it would not move her. “I thought--I expected--” Amber began, with a tone of reproach in her voice. “You are really going to marry him--him--Mr. Clifton?” she cried, after faltering over a word or two. “Did you not see it in the papers, and has any one the hardihood to put the papers in the wrong?” said Josephine. “And you are to be congratulated? I am to congratulate you?” said Amber. “Ah, that is quite another matter, my Amber,” laughed Josephine. Amber did not like her laugh. “Why should it be another matter?” she asked. “If you love----”