"And business rivals," Phipps put in cheerfully. "A certain wholesome rivalry, Lady Dredlinton, is good for us all. In whatever camp I find myself, I generally find Mr. Wingate in the opposite one. I have an idea, in fact," he went on, "that we are on the point of recommencing our friendly rivalry."
Josephine, who had been standing up for the last few moments, touched the bell.
"You will keep your rivalry for the City, I trust," she said.
It was just then that Phipps surprised a little glance flashed from Josephine to Wingate. He seemed suddenly to increase in size, to become more menacing, portentous. There was thunder upon his forehead. He seemed on the point of passionate speech. At that moment the butler opened the door and Josephine held out her hand.
"It was very kind of you to call, Mr. Phipps. I will think over all that you have said, and discuss it—with my husband."
Phipps had regained command of himself. He bowed low over her hand but could not keep the malice from his tone.
"You could not have a better counsellor," he declared.
Neither Josephine nor Wingate spoke a word until the door was finally closed after the unwelcome caller and they heard his heavy tread retreating down the hall. Then she sank back upon the couch and motioned him to sit by her side.
"I suppose I am an idiot," she acknowledged, "but that man terrifies me."
"In what way?"
"He is my husband's associate in business." Josephine said, "and apparently desires to take advantage of that fact. My husband is not a reliable person where money is concerned. He seems to have been behaving rather badly."
"I am very sorry," Wingate murmured.
She looked at him curiously.
"Has anything happened?" she asked. "You seem distressed."
Wingate shook his head. The shock of having met his enemy under such circumstances was beginning to pass.
"Forgive me," he begged. "The fact of it is, the last person I expected to find here was Peter Phipps. I forgot that your husband was connected with his company."
"You two are not friends?" she suggested.
"We are bitter enemies," Wingate confessed, "and shall be till one of us goes down. We are a very terrible example of the evils of this age of restraint. In more primitive days we should have gone for one another's throats. One would have lived and the other died. It would have been, better."
Josephine shivered.
"Don't!" she implored. "You sound too much in earnest."
"I am in earnest about that man," he replied gravely. "I beg you, Lady Dredlinton, as I hope to call myself your friend, not to trust him, not to encourage him to visit you, to keep him always at arm's length."
"And I," she answered, holding out her hand, "as I hope and mean to be—as Iamyour friend—promise that I will have no more to do with him than the barest courtesy demands. To tell you the truth, your coming this afternoon was a little inopportune. If you had been a single minute later, I honestly believe that he would have said unforgivable things."
Wingate's eyes flashed.
"If I could have heard him!" he muttered.
"But, dear friend, you could have said nothing nor done anything," she reminded him soothingly. "Remember that although we are a little older friends than many people know of, we still have some distance to go in understanding."
"I want to be your friend, and I want to be your friend quickly," he said doggedly.
"No one in the world needs friends as I do," Josephine answered, "becauseI do not think that any one is more lonely."
"You have changed," he told her, his eyes full of sympathy.
"Since Étaples? Yes! Somehow or other, I was always able to keep cheerful there because there was always so much real misery around, and one felt that one was doing good in the world. Here I seem to be such a useless person, no good to anybody."
"If you say things like that, I shall forget how far we have to travel," he declared. "I need your friendship. I have come over here with rather a desperate purpose. I think I can say that I have never known fear, and yet sometimes I flinch when I think of the next few months. I want a real friend, Lady Dredlinton."
She gave him her hand.
"Josephine, if you please," she said, "and all the friendship you care to claim. There, see how rapidly we have progressed! You have been here barely a quarter of an hour and I have given you what really means a great deal to me."
"I shall prize it," he assured her, "and I shall justify it."
They began to talk of their first meeting, of the doctors and friends whom they had known together. The time slipped away. It was nearly seven o'clock when he rose to leave. Even then she seemed loath to let him go.
"What are you doing this evening?" she enquired.
"Nothing," he answered promptly.
"Come back and dine here," she begged. "I warn you, no one is coming, but I think you had better meet Henry, and, to proceed to the more selfish part of it all, I rather dread a tête-á-tête dinner this evening. Will you be very good-natured and come?"
He held her hands and looked into her eyes.
"Josephine," he asked, "do you think it needs any good nature on my part?"
She met his gaze frankly enough at first, smiling gratefully at his ready acceptance. And then a curious change came. She felt her heart begin to beat faster, the strange intrusion of a new element into her life and thoughts and being. It was shining out of her eyes, something which made her a little afraid yet ridiculously light-hearted. Suddenly she felt the colour burning in her cheeks. She withdrew her hands, lost her presence of mind, and found it again at the sound of the servant's approaching footsteps.
"About eight o'clock, then," she said. "A dinner coat will do unless you are going on somewhere. Henry will be so glad to meet you."
"It will give me great pleasure to meet Lord Dredlinton," Wingate murmured, as he made his farewell bow.
Dredlinton House, before which Wingate presented himself punctually at eight o'clock that evening, had a sombre, almost a deserted appearance. The great bell which he pealed seemed to ring through empty spaces. His footsteps echoed strangely in the lofty white stone hall as he followed the butler into a small anteroom, from which, however, he was rescued a few minutes later by Josephine's maid.
"Her ladyship will be glad if you will come to the boudoir," she invited."Dinner is to be served there. If monsieur will follow me."
Wingate passed up the famous staircase, around which was a little semicircle of closed doors, and was ushered into a small apartment on the first floor, through the shielded windows of which he caught glimpses of green trees. The room was like a little fairy chamber, decorated in white and the faintest shade of mauve. In the center, a white and gold round table was prepared for the service of dinner, some wonderful cut glass and a little bunch of mauve sweet peas its only decoration.
"Her ladyship will be down in a moment," the maid announced, as she lowered the blind a little more to keep out the last gleam of sunlight. "If monsieur will be seated."
Wingate ignored the silent invitation of the voluptuous little settee with its pile of cushions. He stood instead upon the hearth rug, gazing around him. The room, in its way, was a revelation. Josephine, ever since their first meeting at Étaples, had always seemed to him to carry with her a faint suggestion of sadness, which everything in this little apartment seemed to contradict. The silverpoint etchings upon the wall were of the school of Hellieu, delicate but daring, exquisite in workmanship and design, the last word in the expression of modern life and love. A study of Psyche, in white marble, fascinated him with its wonderful outline and sense of arrested motion. The atmosphere appeared to him intensely feminine and yet strange. He realised suddenly that it contained no knick-knacks,—nothing, in short, but books and flowers. Perhaps his greatest surprise, however, came at the opening of the door. It seemed at first that he was confronted by a stranger. The woman who entered in a perfectly white gown of some clinging material, with a single row of pearls around her neck, with ringless fingers and plainly coiled hair, seemed like the ghost of her own girlhood. It was only when she smiled, a smile which, curiously enough, seemed to bring back something of that aging sadness into her face, that he found himself able to readjust his tangled impressions. Then he realised that she was no longer a girl, that she was indeed a woman, beautiful, graceful, serious, with all the charm of her greater physical and spiritual maturity.
"Please don't think," she begged, as she sank into the settee by which he was standing, "that I have inveigled you here under false pretences. Henry took the trouble to ring me up from the City this morning to say that he should be dining at home—such an unusual event that I took it for granted it meant a tête-à-tête.—I don't quite know why I treat you with such an extraordinary amount of confidence," she went on, "but I feel that I must and it helps me so much. A tête-à-tête dinner with my husband would have been insupportable. I should have had to telephone to Sarah Baldwin if you had not been available. Sarah would probably have been engaged, and then I should have had to have gone to bed with a headache."
"You don't imagine," he asked, smiling, "that I am disappointed at your husband's absence?"
"I hope not," she answered, raising her eyes to his for a moment.
"Let me imitate your adorable frankness," he begged. "I hope your husband's absence this evening is not because he objects to meeting me?"
"Of course not," she replied wonderingly. "Why on earth should he object to meeting you?"
"You probably don't know," Wingate replied, "that I am in a sort of way the declared enemy of the British and Imperial Granaries—Phipps' latest escapade—of which your husband is a director."
"I am sure that would not have made the slightest difference," she replied. "As a matter of fact, he had no idea that you were coming this evening—I had no opportunity of telling him. A servant rang up from the club, half an hour ago, to say that he would not be home. Come, here is dinner. Will you sit there?" she invited, indicating the chair which a trim parlour maid was holding. "I hope you can eat quite simple things. One scarcely knows what to order, this hot weather."
Wingate took his place, and the conversation merged into those indefinite channels necessitated by the presence of servants. The dinner, simple though it was, was perfect,—iced consomme, a lobster mayonnaise, cold cutlets and asparagus. Presently the little movable sideboard, with its dainty collection of cold dishes and salads, was wheeled outside by the solitary maid who waited upon them, and nothing was left upon the table but a delicately-shaped Venetian decanter ofChâteau Yquem, liqueurs in tiny bottles, the coffee served in a jug of beaten copper, and an ivory box of cigarettes. With the closing of the door, a different atmosphere seemed immediately created. They smiled into one another's eyes in mutual appreciation.
"I was dying to send Laura away," she confessed. "Why do servants get on one's nerves so when one wants to talk? I don't think I ever noticed it before so much."
"Nor I," he admitted. "Now we are alone there is a sort of luxury in thinking that one may open any one of those subjects I want so much to discuss with you, and perhaps a greater luxury still is the lingering, the feeling that unless one chooses one need say nothing and yet be understood."
"Sympathetic person!" she sighed. "Tell me, by the by, did you notice an air of desertion in the lower part of the house?"
"There seemed to be echoes," he admitted. "I noticed it more this afternoon."
"The whole of the rooms downstairs were fitted up as a small hospital during the last year of the war," she explained. "It was after I had a slight breakdown and was sent back from Étaples. Some of our patients stayed on for months afterwards, and we have never had the place put to rights yet. One or two rooms are quite sufficient for us in these days."
"It seems to be a wing by itself that remains empty," Wingate ruminated.
"The house might have been built for the purpose we put it to," she said. "The rooms we turned into a hospital are quite cut off from the rest of the place. If ever you murder Peter Phipps and want a hiding place, I shall be able to provide you with one!"
He was looking unusually thoughtful. It was evident that he was pursuing some train of reflection suggested by her words. At the mention of Phipps' name, however, he came back to earth.
"I think I should rather like to murder Phipps," he confessed. "The worst of it is the laws are so ridiculously undiscriminating. One would have to pay the same penalty for murdering him as for getting rid of an ordinary human being."
"Queer how I share your hatred of that person," she murmured.
"Was he trying to make love to you this afternoon?" Wingate asked bluntly.
"He was just too clever," she replied, "to put it into plain words. His instinct told him what the result would be, so he decided to wait a little longer, although just towards the end he nearly gave himself away. As a matter of fact," she went on, "he was rather tediously melodramatic. My husband, it seems, is in disgrace with the company—has overdrawn, or helped himself to money, or something of the sort. I rather fancy that I am cast for the role of self-sacrificing wife, who saves her husband from prison by little acts of kindness to his wronged partner. Somehow or other, I don't think the role suits me. I am a very hard-hearted woman, I suppose, but I don't believe I should lift up my little finger to save Henry from prison. Besides, I hate the British and Imperial Granaries."
"Why?" he asked.
"I hate the principle of gambling in commodities that are necessary for the poor," she answered. "I don't pretend to be a philanthropist, or charitable, or anything of that sort. I am wrapped up in my own life and its unhappiness. At the same time, I would never receive as a friend any one who indulged in that sort of speculation."
He looked at her thoughtfully, for once without that absorbing personal interest which had sprung up like a flame in his life. He felt that underneath her words lay real earnestness, real purpose.
"Tell me," he asked, a little abruptly, "if I started a crusade against the British and Imperial, outside the Stock Exchange altogether, if I embarked in a crude and illegal scheme to break them up, would you help me?"
"To the fullest extent of my power," she answered eagerly. "Tell me about it at once, please?"
"Not for a few days," he replied. "I have to think out many details, to get my tools together, and then to decide whether I should have a reasonable chance of success."
"Promise me that I shall help?" she insisted.
"I promise that you shall have the opportunity."
She rose from her chair and settled down in a corner of the settee. With a little half-conscious gesture she invited him to take the place by her side.
"Do you know," she said, "that you are making life much more endurable for me?"
"You should never believe it unendurable," he told her firmly. "Whatever one has suffered, and however dreary the present, there is always the future."
"I wonder," she murmured. "In this life or the next?"
"In this one," he answered.
"Are you, by the by, a believer in anything beyond?" she went on.
"A struggling one," he replied. "I have wanted so much to believe that I think I have at times almost succeeded."
"I believe," she said reflectively, "but I cannot analyse my belief. I am most content when I keep my brain shut off from it and consider it as an instinct. I try to tell myself that the power which is responsible for the sorrows of this world must provide compensation. Even history can show us that this has always been the case. Yesterday," she continued, "I went to a spiritual séance. I found nothing. I shall go to the next thing of the sort which any one suggests. I am like the hypochondriac with his list of patent medicines. I try them all, but my heart still aches."
"I think," he admitted, "thatau fondI have, like most men, a strong leaven of materialism in me. I have had my disappointments in life. I want my compensations here, in the same world where I have suffered."
"Why should we not try to believe, like La Fontaine," she questioned, "that sorrow and unhappiness are akin to disease, a mental instead of a physical scourge—that it must pass just as inevitably?"
"It is a comfortable philosophy," he confessed. "Could you adopt it?"
"In my blackest moments I should have scoffed at the idea," she replied. "One thing I know quite well, though, is unchanging," she continued, her face losing all the gentle softness which a moment before he had found so fascinating, so reminiscent of those sad, sleepy-eyed women immortalised by the masters of the Renaissance. "That is my hatred of everything and everybody connected with my present life."
"Everybody?" he murmured.
She stretched out her hand impulsively. He held it in his with a tender, caressing clasp. There seemed to be no need of words. The moment was in its way so wonderful that neither of them heard the opening of the door. It was only the surprised exclamation of the man who had entered which brought them back to a very sordid present.
"I fear" the newcomer remarked, as he softly closed the door behind him, "that I am an intruder. Perhaps, Josephine, I may be favoured with an introduction to this gentleman? He is a stranger to me, so far as I remember. An old friend of yours, I presume?"
He advanced a step or two farther into the room, a slim, effeminate-looking person of barely medium height, dressed with the utmost care, of apparently no more than middle age but with crow's-feet about his eyes and sagging pockets of flesh underneath them. His closely trimmed, sandy moustache was streaked with grey, his eyes were a little bloodshot, he had the shrinking manner of one who suffers from habitual nervousness. Josephine, after her first start of surprise, watched him with coldly questioning eyes.
"I hope you have dined, Henry," she said. "A waiter rang up from somewhere to say you would not be home."
"A message which I do not doubt left you inconsolable," he observed, with a little curl of his lips. "Do not distress yourself, I pray. I have dined at the club, and I have only come home to change. I am on my way to a party. I would not have intruded if your maid had shown her usual discretion."
Josephine ignored the insolent innuendo.
"You do not know my husband, I think, Mr. Wingate," she said,—"Mr. JohnWingate—Lord Dredlinton."
The newcomer's manner underwent a sudden change.
"What, John Wingate from New York?" he exclaimed.
Wingate assented briefly. Lord Dredlinton advanced at once with outstretched hand. All the amiability which he could muster at a moment's notice was diffused into his tone and manner.
"My dear sir," he said, "I am delighted to meet you. I have just been dining with our mutual friend, Peter Phipps, and your name was the last mentioned. I, in fact, accepted a commission to find you out and convey a message from Phipps. There is a little matter in which you are both indirectly interested which he wants to discuss."
Wingate had risen to his feet. By the side of the slighter man, his height and appearance seemed almost imposing.
"To be quite frank with you, Lord Dredlinton," he said, as he returned the newcomer's greeting without enthusiasm, "I cannot imagine any subject in which I could share an interest with Mr. Phipps."
Lord Dredlinton was politely surprised.
"Is that so? Peter Phipps is an awfully good fellow."
"Mr. Phipps is a director of the British and Imperial Granaries,Limited," Wingate said quietly.
"So am I," Lord Dredlinton announced, with a bland smile.
"I am aware of it," was the curt reply.
"You don't approve of our company?"
"I do not."
Lord Dredlinton shrugged his shoulders. He lit a cigarette and dismissed the subject.
"Well, well," he continued amiably, "there is no need for us to quarrel, I hope. We all look at things differently in this world, and, fortunately, the matter which I want to discuss with you lies right outside the operations of the B. & I. When can you give me a few moments of your time, Mr. Wingate? Will you call around at our offices, Number 13 Throgmorton Street, next Tuesday morning at, say? eleven-thirty?"
Wingate was a little perplexed.
"I don't want to waste your time, Lord Dredlinton," he said. "Can't you give me some idea as to the nature of this business?"
"To tell you the truth, I can't," the other confided. "It's more Phipps' affair than mine. I'll promise, though, that we won't keep you for longer than ten minutes."
"I will come then." Wingate acquiesced a little doubtfully. "I must warn you, however, that between Phipps and myself there is a quarrel of ancient standing. We meet as acquaintances because the conventions of the world make anything else ridiculous. One of my objects in coming to this side is to consider whether I can find any reasonable means of attacking the very disgraceful trust with which you and he are associated."
Lord Dredlinton remained entirely unruffled. He shrugged his shoulders with an air of protest.
"You are a little severe, Mr. Wingate," he said, "but I promise you that Phipps shall keep his temper and that I will not be drawn into a quarrel. I am very pleased to see you here. My wife's friends are always mine.—If you will excuse me, I will go and change my clothes now. I have been inveigled into the last word of our present-day frivolities—a theatrical supper party."
He turned away, with an enigmatic smile at his wife and a ceremonious bow to Wingate, and closed the door behind him carefully. They heard his retreating footsteps on the stairs; then Wingate resumed his seat by Josephine's side.
"Do you mind?" he asked.
"Not a scrap," she replied. "Besides, it has given Henry such immense pleasure. I am quite sure that he never believed it possible that I should be found holding another man's hand. Or," she went on, with a little grimace, "that any other man would want to hold it."
"It is possible," Wingate said deliberately, "that your husband may have further surprises of that nature in store for him."
She laughed. "Is that a threat?"
"If you like to regard it as such. You will find out before long that I am a terribly persistent person."
"I wonder," she remarked thoughtfully, "what could have made him so extraordinarily agreeable to you."
"To tell you the truth, I was surprised," Wingate replied. "And Peter Phipps, too! What can they want with me down at Throgmorton Street? They can't imagine that they can hustle me into the market?"
"Henry was very much in earnest," she told him.
Wingate's face darkened for a moment.
"They couldn't suspect—No, that wouldn't be possible!"
"Suspect what?"
"That my enmity to the B. & I.," he went on, in a low tone, "is beginning to take definite shape."
"Just what do you mean by that?" she asked.
"I have just the glimmerings of a scheme," he told her. "It will be something entirely unexpected, and it will mean a certain amount of risk."
"Don't forget that you have promised to let me help," she reminded him.
"If I strike," he said, "it will be at the directors. Your husband will suffer with the rest."
"That would not affect my attitude in the least," she assured him. "As I think you must have gathered, there is no manner of sympathy between my husband and myself."
"I am glad to hear you say so," he declared bluntly. "If there had been, I should have felt it my duty to advise you to use all your influence to get him to resign from the Board."
"As bad as that?"
"As bad as that," he answered.
"You can't tell me anything about your scheme yet?"
"Not yet."
"How is it," she asked, "that they have been allowed to operate in wheat to this enormous extent?"
"Well, for one thing," he told her, "the company has been planned and worked out with simply diabolical cleverness. They are inside the law all the time, and they manage to keep there. Their agents are so camouflaged that you can't tell for whom they are buying. Then they command an immense capital."
"The others must have found it, then," she observed. "My husband is almost without means."
"Phipps has supporters," Wingate said thoughtfully. "They'll carry on this combine until the last moment, until a Government commission, or something of the sort, looks like intervening. Then they'll probably let a dozen of their subsidiary companies go smash, and Peter Phipps, Skinflint Martin and Rees will be multimillionaires. Incidentally, the whole of their enormous profits will have come from the working classes."
"However visionary it is, I want to know about your scheme," she persisted.
"I cannot make up my mind to bring you into it," he declared doubtfully."It is practically a one-man show, and it is—well, a little primitive."
"Do you think I mind that?" she asked eagerly. "The only point worth considering is, could I help? You know in your heart that you could not make me afraid."
"I shall take you into my confidence, at any rate," he promised, "and you shall decide afterwards. I warn you, you will think that I have drunk deep of the Bowery melodrama."
"I shall mind nothing," she laughed as she assured him. "When do we begin?"
Wingate was thoughtful for a moment or two. They both heard the opening of a heavy door down below, the hailing of a taxi by the butler, and Dredlinton's voice in the street.
"Is that your husband going?" he enquired.
She nodded.
"Then I am going to make a most singular request," he said. "I am going to ask you whether you would show me over the portion of the house which you used as a hospital."
Wingate returned to his rooms at the Milan about eleven o'clock that evening, to find Roger Kendrick, Maurice White and the Honourable Jimmy Wilshaw stretched out in his most comfortable chairs, drinking whiskies and sodas and smoking cigarettes.
"Welcome!" he exclaimed, smiling upon them from the threshold. "Are you all here? Is there any one I forgot to invite?"
"The man's tone is inhospitable," the Honourable Jimmy murmured, showing no inclination to rise.
"I decline to apologise," Kendrick said. "The fact of it is, we're here for your good, Wingate. We are here to see that you do not die of ennui and loneliness in this stony-hearted city."
"In other words," Maurice White chimed in, "we are here to take you to the great supper-party."
"Well, I'm glad to hear about it," Wingate declared, giving his coat and hat to the valet who had followed him in. "Why don't you fellows sit down and have a drink?"
"My dear fellow," Kendrick sighed, "sarcasm does not become you. We are all drinking—your whisky. Also, I believe, smoking your cigarettes. Your servant—admirable fellow, that—absolutely forced them upon us—wouldn't take 'no.' And indeed, why should we refuse? We have come to offer you rivers of champagne, cigars of abnormal length, and the lips of the fairest houris in London. In other words, Sir Frederick Houstley, steel magnate of Sheffield, is giving a supper party to the world, and our instructions are to convey you there by force or persuasion, drunk or sober, sleepy or wide awake."
"I accept your cordial invitation," Wingate said, mixing himself a whisky and soda. "At what time does the fight commence?"
"Forthwith," Kendrick announced. "We sally forth from here to theArcadian Rooms, situated in this building. Afterwards we make merry.John, my boy," he went on, "you have the air of a man who has drunk deepalready to-night of the waters of happiness. Exactly where did you dine?"
"In Utopia," Wingate answered. "According to you, I am to sup in fairyland."
"But breakfast," the Honourable Jimmy put in,—"a man ought to be dashed careful where he breakfasts. A man is known by his breakfast companions, what?"
"Young fellow," Wingate asked, "where is Sarah?"
"Have no fear," was the blissful reply. "Sarah is coming to the supper. She's filling her old 'bus up with peaches from the Gaiety. Not being allowed to sit inside with any of them, I was sent on ahead."
"You dog!" Maurice White exclaimed.
"Dog yourself," was the prompt retort. "Opportunity is a fine thing. Sometimes I have a gruesome fear that Sarah does not altogether trust me."
Kendrick, who had been straightening his tie before the glass, now swung around.
"This way to the lift, boys," he said. "Time we put in an appearance."
The reception room of the Arcadian suite was already fairly well crowded. Wingate shook hands with his host, a cheery, theatrical-loving soul, and was presented to many other people. Where he was not introduced he found a pleasing absence of formality, which facilitated conversation and rapidly widened his circle of acquaintances. Kendrick came over and slapped him on the back.
"Wingate, my lad," he exclaimed, "you're going some! You're the bright boy of the party. Whom are you taking into supper?"
"Me!" said a rather shrill but not unmusical voice from Wingate's side. "Introduce us, please, Mr. Kendrick. We have been making furtive conversation for the last five minutes."
"It is a great occasion," Kendrick declared. "I present Mr. John Wingate, America's greatest financier, most successful soldier, and absolutely inevitable President, to Miss Flossie Lane, England's greatest musical comedy artist."
Miss Lane grabbed Wingate's arm.
"Let's go in to supper," she suggested. "All the best places will be taken if we don't hurry."
"One word," Kendrick begged, relapsing for a moment into his ordinary manner as he touched Wingate on the shoulder. "Dredlinton is here, rather drunk and very quarrelsome. I heard him telling some one about having found you dining alone with his wife to-night. Phipps was listening. Look at him, as black as a thundercloud! Keep your head if Dredlinton gets troublesome."
Wingate nodded and was promptly led away. They found places about half-way down the great horseshoe table, laden with flowers and every sort of cold delicacy. There were champagne bottles at every other place, a small crowd of waiters, eager to justify their existence,—a rollicking, Bohemian crowd, thejeunesse doréeof London, and all the talent and beauty of the musical comedy stage. It was a side of life with which Wingate was somewhat unfamiliar. Nevertheless, his feet that night were resting upon the clouds. Any form of life was sweet to him. The new joy in his heart warmed his pulses, lightened his tongue, unlocked a new geniality. He was disposed to talk with everybody. The young lady by his side, however, had other views.
"Do you like our show, Mr. Wingate?" she asked. "Or perhaps you don't go to musical comedies? I am in 'Lady Diana,' you know."
"One of the very first things I am going to see," Wingate replied, "but as a matter of fact, I only arrived from America a few days ago. I hear that you are a great success."
It took the young lady very nearly a quarter of an hour to explain how greatly the play might be improved and strengthened by the allotment to her of a few more songs and another dance, and she also recounted the argument she had had with the stage manager as to her absence from the stage during the greater part of Act Two.
"I am not vain," she concluded, with engaging frankness, "but on the other hand I am not foolish, and I know quite well that many people—a great part of the audience, in fact—come because they see my name upon the boards, and I have numberless complaints because I am only on for such a short time in what should be the most important act of the play. I tell them it's nothing to do with me, but as long as my name is displayed outside the theatre and I know how they feel about it, I feel a certain responsibility. Now you are a very clever man, and a man of the world, Mr. Wingate. What do you think about it?"
"I think that you are quite right," he declared, with satisfactory emphasis.
"You don't know Mr. Maken, our manager, I suppose?" she enquired.
Wingate shook his head.
"As a matter of fact," he confessed, "I know very few theatrical people."
"What a pity you're not fond of the stage!" she sighed, with a world of regret in her very blue eyes. "You might have a theatre of your own, and a leading lady, and all the rest of it."
"It sounds rather fascinating," he admitted, "under certain circumstances. All the same, I don't think I should like to make a business of what is such a great pleasure."
"I thought, with American men," she said archly, "that their business was their pleasure."
"To a certain extent, I suppose," he admitted, "but then, you see, I am half English. My mother was English although she was married in America, and I was born there."
"How did you manage about serving?" she enquired.
"I gave both a turn," he explained. "I turned out for England first and then for America."
"How splendid of you!" she murmured, raising her fine eyes admiringly and then dropping them in a most effective manner. "But wasn't it a shocking waste of time and lives! Just fancy, in all those years, how many undeveloped geniuses must have been killed without ever having had their chance! How miserably upside down the whole world was, too! Four years and more during which a supper party, except at a private house, was an impossibility!"
"I suppose," Wingate admitted, a little staggered, "that taken from that point of view the war was an unfortunate infliction."
"And after all," the young lady went on, "here we are at the end of it very much as though it had never happened. Do you think they will be able to stop wars in the future?"
"I don't know," he confessed. "I suppose international differences must be settled somehow or other. Personally, I think a wrestling match, or something of that sort—"
"Now you're making fun of me," she interrupted reproachfully. "I see you don't want to talk about serious things. Do you admire Miss Orford?" she asked, indicating another musical comedy lady who was seated opposite, and who had shown occasional signs of a desire to join in the conversation.
Wingate took his cue from his questioner's tone and glance.
"A little too thin," he hazarded.
"Molly is almost painfully thin," his companion conceded, with apparent reluctance, "and I think she makes up far more than she need."
"Bad for the complexion in time, I suppose," he observed.
"I don't know. Molly's been doing it for a great many years. She understudies me, you know, at the theatre. Would you like me to send you word if ever I'm unable to play?"
"Quite unnecessary," he replied, with the proper amount of warmth. "I should be far too brokenhearted to attend if you were not there. Besides, is Miss Orford clever?"
"Don't ask me," her friend sighed. "She doesn't even do me the compliment of imitating me. Tell me, don't you love supping here?"
"Under present circumstances," he agreed.
"I love it, too," she murmured, with an answering flash of the eyes. "I am not sure," she went on, "that I care about these large parties, although I always like to come when Sir Frederick asks me. He is such a dear, isn't he?"
"He is a capital host," Wingate assented.
"I am so fond of really interesting conversation," the young lady further confided. "I love to have a man who really amounts to something tell me about his life and work."
"Mr. Peter Phipps, for instance?" he suggested. "Didn't I see you lunching here with him the other day?"
She looked across the table, towards where Phipps was sitting hand in hand with a young lady in blue, and apparently being very entertaining. Miss Flossie caught a glimpse of Wingate's expression.
"You don't like Mr. Phipps," she said. "You don't think I ought to lunch with him."
"I shouldn't if I were a young lady like you, whose choice must be unlimited," Wingate replied.
"How do you know that it is unlimited?" she demanded. "Perhaps just the people whom I would like to lunch with don't ask me."
"They need encouragement," he suggested.
She laughed into his eyes.
"Do you know anything about the men who need encouragement?" she asked demurely.
He avoided the point and made some casual remark about the changes inLondon during the last few years. She sighed sorrowfully.
"It has changed for no one so much as me," she murmured. "The war—"
"You lost friends, I suppose?" he ventured.
She closed her eyes.
"Don't!" she whispered. "I never speak of it," she went on, twisting a ring around her fingers nervously, "I don't like it mentioned, but I was really engaged to young Lord Fanleighton."
He murmured a little word of sympathy, and their conversation was momentarily interrupted as she leaned forward to answer an enquiry from her host. Wingate turned to Sarah, who was seated at his other side.
"How dare you neglect me so shamefully!" she asked.
"Let me make amends," he pleaded.
"I am glad you feel penitent, at any rate. I expect Miss Flossie Lane has asked you what you think of her friend, Miss Orford, and told you that she was engaged to Lord Fanleighton."
"What a hearing!" he murmured.
"Don't be silly," she replied. "I couldn't hear a word, but I know her stock in trade."
There was a little stir at the farther end of the table. Lord Dredlinton had left his place and was standing behind Phipps, with his hands upon his shoulders. He seemed to be shouting something in his ear. At that moment he recognised Wingate. He staggered up the farther side of the table towards him, butting into a waiter on the way and pausing for a moment to curse him, Flossie jogged Wingate's elbow.
"What fun!" she whispered. "Here's Lord Dredlinton, absolutely blotto!"
Wingate from the first had a prescience of disagreeable things. There was malice in Dredlinton's pallid face, the ugly twist of his lips and the light in his bloodshot eyes. He paused opposite to them, and leaning his hands on the back of the nearest chair, spoke across the table.
"Hullo, Flossie!" he exclaimed. "How are you, old dear? How are you, Wingate?"
Wingate replied with cold civility, Flossie with a careless nod.
"I do hope," she whispered to her companion, glancing into the mirror which she had just drawn from her bag, "that Lord Dredlinton isn't going to be foolish. He does embarrass me so sometimes."
"I say," Dredlinton went on, "what are you doing here, Wingate? I didn't know this sort of thing was in your line."
Wingate raised his eyebrows but made no response. Dredlinton shook his head reproachfully at Miss Lane.
"Flossie," he continued, "you ought to know better. Besides, you will waste your time. Mr. Wingate's taste in women is of a very—superior order. Doesn't care about your sort at all. He likes saints. That's right, isn't it, Wingate?"
"You seem to know," was the cool reply.
"Not 't tall sure," Dredlinton went on, balancing himself with difficulty, "that your new conquest would altogether approve of this, you know. Wingate, let me tell you that Flossie is a very dangerous young lady—destroys the peace of everybody—can't sleep myself for thinking of her. Not your sort at all, Wingate. We know your sort, don't we, eh?"
Wingate remained contemptuously silent. Kendrick rose from his place and laid his hand on Dredlinton's shoulder.
"Come and sit down, Dredlinton," he said shortly. "You're making an idiot of yourself."
"Go to hell!" the other replied truculently. "Who are you? Just that man's broker, that's all. Want to sell wheat, Wingate, or buy it, eh?"
Wingate looked at him steadily.
"You're drunk," he said. "I should advise you to get a friend to take you home."
"Drunk, am I?" Dredlinton shouted. "What if I am? I'm a better man drunk than you are sober—although she may not think so, eh?"
Wingate looked at him from underneath level brows.
"I should advise you not to mention any names here," he said.
"I like that!" the other scoffed. "Not to mention any names, eh? He'll forbid me next to talk about my own wife."
"You'd be a cur if you did," Wingate told him.
A little spot of colour burned in Dredlinton's cheeks. For a moment he showed his teeth. But for Kendrick's restraining arm, he seemed as though he would have thrown himself across the table. Then, with a great effort, he regained command of himself.
"So you won't sell wheat and you won't buy wheat, Mr. American!" he jeered. "I know what you would like to buy, though—and, damn it all, there's old Dreadnought Phipps down there—he's a bidder, too—ain't you, Phipps, old boy? What you see in her, either of you, I don't know! She's no use to me."
Phipps rose in his place. Sir Frederick Houstley left his chair and came round to Dredlinton.
"Lord Dredlinton," he said, "I think you had better leave."
"I'll leave when I damned well please!" was the quick reply. "Don't you lose your wool, old Freddy. This is going to be a joke. You listen. I tell you what I'll do. I'm a poor man—devilish poor—and it takes a lot of money to enjoy oneself, nowadays. You're all in this. Sit tight and listen. We'll have an auction."
Wingate rose slowly to his feet, pushed his chair back and stood behind it. Flossie gripped him by the wrist.
"Don't take any notice of him, please, Mr. Wingate," she implored, in an agonised whisper. "For my sake, don't! He's dangerous when he's like this. I couldn't bear it if anything happened to you."
"Look here, Dredlinton," Sir Frederick expostulated, "you are spoiling my party. You don't want to quarrel with me, do you?"
"Quarrel with you, Freddy?" Dredlinton replied, patting him on the back affectionately. "Not I! I'm too fond of you, old dear. You give too nice parties. Always the right sort of people—except for that bounder over there," he went on, nodding his head towards Wingate.
"Then sit down and don't make an ass of yourself," his host begged."You're spoiling every one's enjoyment, making a disturbance like this."
"Spoiling their enjoyment be hanged!" Dredlinton scoffed. "Tell you what, I'm going to make the party go. I'm going to have a bit of fun. What about an auction, eh?—-an auction with two bidders only—both millionaires—one's a pal and the other isn't. Both want the same thing—happens to be mine. Damn! I never thought it was worth anything, but here goes. What'll you bid, Phipps?"
Phipps apprised the situation and decided upon his rôle. He had a very correct intuition as to what was likely to happen.
"Sit down and don't be an ass, Dredlinton," he laughed. "Don't take the fellow seriously," he went on, speaking generally. "He's all right as long as you let him alone. You're all right, aren't you, Dredlinton?"
"Right as rain," was the confident reply. "But let's hear your bid, if you're going to make one."
"Bid? You've got nothing to sell," Phipps declared good humouredly, with a covert glance towards Wingate. "What are you getting rid of, eh? Your household goods?"
"Come on, Phipps," Dredlinton persisted. "You're not going to fade away like that. You've given me the straight tip. You were the only man in the running. Clear course. No jealousy. Up to you to step in and win. You've got a rival, I tell you. You'll have to bid or lose her. Open your mouth wide, man. Start it with ten thou."
"Sit down, you blithering jackass!" Phipps roared. "Give him a drink, some one, and keep him quiet."
"Don't want a drink," Dredlinton replied, shaking himself free from Kendrick's grasp. "Want to keep my head clear. Big deal, this. May reestablish the fortunes of a fallen family. Gad, it's a night for all you outsiders to remember, this!" he went on, glancing insolently around the table. "Don't often have the chance of seeing a nobleman selling his household treasures. Come on, Wingate. Phipps is shy about starting. Let's have your bid. What about ten thou, eh?"
Wingate came slowly around the table. His eyes never left Dredlinton. Dredlinton, too, watched him like a cat, watched him drawing nearer and nearer.
"What, do you want to whisper your bid?" he jeered. "Out with it like a man! This is a unique opportunity. Heaven knows when you may get the chance again! Shall we say twenty thou, Wingate? A peeress and a saint! Gad, they aren't to be picked up every day!"
"What on earth is he trying to sell?" Flossie demanded.
Dredlinton turned with an evil grin. He had at least the courage of a drunken man, for he took no account of Wingate towering over him.
"Don't you know?" he cried out. "Doesn't every one understand?"
"Stop!" Wingate ordered.
"And why the hell should I stop for you?" Dredlinton shouted. "If Flossie wants to know, here's the truth. It's the least cherished of all my household goods. It's my wife."
Of what happened during the next few seconds, or rather of the manner of its happening, few people were able to render a coherent account. All that they remembered was a most amazing spectacle,—the spectacle of Wingate walking quietly to the door with Dredlinton in his arms, kicking and shouting smothered profanities, but absolutely powerless to free himself. The door was opened by a waiter, and Wingate passed into the corridor. Amaître d'hôtel,with presence of mind, hurried up to him.
"Have you an empty room with a key?" Wingate asked.
The man led the way and pushed open the door of a small apartment used on busy occasions for a service room. Wingate thrust in his struggling burden and locked the door.
"Strong panels?" he enquired, pausing for a moment to listen to the blows directed upon them.
The head waiter smiled.
"They're more than one man can break through, sir," he assured him.
Wingate made his way back to the supper party. Half of the guests were on their feet. He met Sir Frederick near the door.
"Sorry, Sir Frederick, if I am in any way responsible for this little disturbance," he said, as he made his way towards his place. "I think if I were you, I should give this key to one of the commissionaires a little later on. Lord Dredlinton is quite safe for the present."
Sir Frederick patted him on the shoulder.
"Most unprovoked attack," he declared. "Delighted to have made your acquaintance, Mr. Wingate, you treated him exactly as he deserved."
Wingate resumed his place and held out his glass to the waiter. Then he raised it to his lips. The glass was full to the brim but his fingers were perfectly steady. He looked down the table towards Phipps, whose expression was noncommittal, and gently disemburdened himself of Flossie's arm, which had stolen through his.
"I think you are the most wonderful man I ever met," she confided.
"You're a brick," Sarah whispered in his ear. "Come and see me off the premises, there's a dear. Jimmy won't be ready for hours yet and I want to get home."
Wingate rose at once, made his adieux and accompanied Sarah to the door, followed by a reproachful glance from Flossie. The former took his arm and held it tightly as they passed along the corridor.
"I think that you are the dearest man I ever knew, Mr. Wingate," she said, "just as I think that Josephine is the dearest woman, and I hope more than anything in the world—well, you know what I hope."
"I think I do," Wingate replied. "Thank you."
Andrew Slate, a very personable man in his spring clothes of grey tweed, took up his hat and prepared to depart. Half-past twelve had just struck by Wingate's clock, and the two men had been together since ten.
"You're a wonderful person, Wingate," Slate said, with a note of genuine admiration in his tone. "I don't believe there's another man breathing who would have had the courage to plan a coup like this."
Wingate shrugged his shoulders.
"The men who dig deep into life," he replied, as he shook hands, "are the men who take risks. I was never meant to be one of those who scratch about on the surface."
A note was slipped into his letter box as he let Slate out. He noticed the coronet on the envelope and opened it eagerly. A glance at the signature brought him disappointment. He read it slowly, with a hard smile upon his lips:
My dear Mr. Wingate,
I am writing to express to you my sincere and heartfelt regret for last night's unfortunate incident. I can do no more nor any less than to confess in plain words that I was drunk. It is a humiliating confession, but it happens to be the truth. Will you accept this apology in the spirit in which it is tendered, and wipe out the whole incident from your memory? I venture to hope and believe that you are sportsman enough to accede to my request.
Yours regretfully.
Wingate was conscious of a feeling of disappointment as he threw the note upon the table. Open warfare was, after all, so much better. Anamendeso complete left him with no alternative save acquiescence. Even while he was coming to this somewhat unwelcome decision, the telephone bell rang. He took off the receiver and was instantly galvanised into attention. It was Josephine speaking.
"Is that Mr. Wingate?" she asked.
"It is," he admitted. "Good morning—Josephine!"
"Quite right," she answered composedly. "That is how I like to have you call me. I am speaking for my husband. He is here by my side at the present moment."
"The mischief he is!" Wingate said. "Well?"
"My husband has desired me to intercede with you," Josephine continued, "to beg your acceptance of the apology which he has sent you this morning."
"No further word need be spoken upon the subject," Wingate replied. "Your husband has explained that he was drunk and has tendered his apology. I accept it."
There was a brief pause. Josephine was obviously repeating Wingate's decision to her husband. Then she spoke again.
"My husband desires me to thank you," she said. "He desires me to hope that you will continue to visit at the house, and that you will not allow anything he may have said to interfere between our friendship."
"Nothing that he has said or could say could interfere with that,"Wingate assured her,—"at least that is my point of view."
"And mine!"
"Shall I see you to-day?" he asked.
"I hope so," she answered. "Perhaps after luncheon—"
There was a sound as though the receiver had been taken from her fingers.Dredlinton himself spoke.
"Look here, Wingate, this is Dredlinton speaking," he said. "You won't let this little affair make any difference to your call upon us on Tuesday morning?"
"Certainly not," Wingate replied. "I was thinking of writing you about that, though. I don't see any object in my coming. I think you had better let me off that visit."
"My dear fellow," Dredlinton pleaded, "if you don't come, Phipps will think it is because of last night's affair and I shall get it in the neck. I'm in disgrace enough already. Do, for heaven's sake, oblige me, there's a good chap."
Wingate hesitated for a moment.
"Very well," he assented, "I will go. Is that all?"
"That's all, thanks."
"I should like to speak to your wife again," Wingate said.
"Sorry, she's just gone out," was the rather malicious reply. "I'd have kept her for you, if I'd known. So long!"
A knocking at the door,—a rather low, suggestive knocking. Wingate knew that it was an impossibility, but he nevertheless hastened to throw it open. Miss Flossie Lane stood there, very becomingly dressed in a tailor-made costume of covert coating. She wore a hat with yellow buttercups, and she had shown a certain reticence as regards cosmetics which amounted to a tacit acknowledgment of his prejudices.
"Miss Lane!" he exclaimed.
She looked at him with wide-open eyes.
"But you were expecting me, weren't you?" she asked. "I remembered your inviting me quite well, but I couldn't remember where you said, so I thought I'd better come and fetch you. I haven't done wrong, have I?"
"Most certainly not," Wingate replied. "Come in, please. I'll ring for a cocktail and send the man down into the restaurant to engage a table."
She sank into an easy-chair and looked around her, while Wingate did as he had suggested. The sitting room, filled with trophies of curiously mixed characteristics—a Chinese idol squatting in one corner, some West African weapons above it, two very fine moose heads over a quaintly shaped fireplace, and a row of choice Japanese prints over the bookcase—was a very masculine but eminently habitable apartment. Miss Lane looked around her and approved.
"This is quite the nicest flat in the Court," she declared, "and I've been in so many of them. How did you find time to furnish it like this? I thought that you'd only just arrived from America."
"I come to London often enough to keep this little suite here," he explained. "I had it even through the war. Sometimes I lend it to a friend. I am one of those domestic people," he added with a smile, "who like to have a home of some sort to come to at the end of a journey."
"You're much too nice to live alone," she ventured.
"Well, you see, your sex has decreed that I shall up to the present," he remarked. "Here come the cocktails. I hope that yours won't be too dry. Where will you lunch—the restaurant or the grillroom?"
"The grillroom," she decided, after a moment's reflection. "We can go and sit out in the foyer afterwards and have our coffee."
The cocktails and Wingate's choice of a table were alike approved. Wingate himself, as soon as he had recovered from the bland assurance with which his guest had manufactured her invitation, devoted himself with a somewhat hard light in his eyes to the task of entertaining her. The whole gamut of her attractions was let loose for his benefit. He represented to her the one desirable thing, difficult of attainment, perhaps, but worth the effort. Soft glances and words hinting at tenderness, sighs and half-spoken appeals were all made to serve their obvious purpose. If Wingate's responses were a little artificial, he still made no attempt to hurry through the meal. He seemed perfectly content to consider the attractions which his companion heaped into the shop window of her being. Once she almost amused him, and he found himself for a few seconds contemplating her with some glimmering of the thought which she was so anxious to instil into his brain. After all, a companion like this was soothing, made no demands, filled a pleasant enough place in the broken ways of life, provided one had no other aspirations. And then the thought passed from him,—forever.
They took their coffee and liqueurs in the foyer. Flossie, perfectly satisfied with her companion and her progress with him, chattered gaily away with scarcely a pause, and Wingate, after his first resentment at her coming had passed, found a certain relief in sitting and listening to her equable flow of nonsense. By and by, however, she came very near annoying him.
"You know Lady Dredlinton very well, don't you Mr. Wingate?" she asked, a little abruptly.
His answer was marked with a warning note of stiffness.
"Lady Dredlinton," he repeated. "I know her, certainly. I was at her hospital at Étaples."
"Every one says that she is charming," the young lady continued, with a side glance at him. "Pity she can't keep that wicked husband of hers a little more under control. You know, Mr. Wingate," she confided, "he has asked me to supper four or five times but I have never cared about going with him quite alone. A girl has to be so careful in my position. Don't you agree with me?"
"I suppose so," he answered indifferently.
"Dear old 'Dredful,' as Lord Fanleighton used to call him, can be very amusing sometimes, but he hasn't the best reputation, and of course he's terrible when he's drunk, as he was last night. I do so like nice men," she sighed, "and there are scarcely any left. One seems to have lost all one's friends in the war," she went on reminiscently, her large blue eyes veiled with sadness. "It makes one feel very lonely sometimes."
Wingate scarcely heard her. His eyes were fixed upon the two men walking up the carpeted way from the restaurant. One was Peter Phipps, the other Lord Dredlinton. Flossie Lane, seeking to discover the cause of her companion's abstraction, glanced in the same direction and recognised them at once.
"Why here is Lord Dredlinton!" she exclaimed. "And Mr. Peter Phipps! He is rather a dear person, Mr. Phipps, you know, although you don't like him."
"Is he!" Wingate observed grimly.
"They are coming to speak to us," the young lady went on, shaking her skirts a little and glancing into the mirror which she had just drawn from her bag. "What a bother!"
Lord Dredlinton, more dignified than usual but if possible still more unpleasant, threaded his way between the chairs and paused before the two, followed, a few spaces behind, by Phipps.
"Hullo, Flossie!" the former exclaimed. "How are you, Wingate? You got my letter?"
"I received your letter and also your telephone message," Wingate replied stiffly. "So far as I am concerned, the matter, as I told you, is at an end."
"That's all right, then.—Flossie," Dredlinton continued, looking reproachfully at the young woman whose hand he was still holding, "I told you last night that you ought to know better. You should confine your attentions to the black sheep of the world, like me. Dear me!" he went on, standing a little on one side so as not to conceal Wingate. "My wife, apparently, has been lunching here. Wingate, shall we form a screen in front of you, or are you content to be toppled from your pedestal?"
Wingate met the ill-natured sneer indifferently. He even smiled as Phipps, standing on the outside of the little circle, also altered his position. It was clearly the intention of both that Josephine should realise the situation. Attracted by a gesture from her husband, she glanced across at them. For a single moment she half hesitated. There was a queer look in her eyes, a look of surprise mingled even with pain. Then she flashed a brilliant smile upon Wingate, ignored her husband and Phipps, and passed on.
"Cut!" Lord Dredlinton exclaimed, with mock dismay. "Cut, my friend Phipps! Me, her husband, and you, her dear friend! Really, it's a most uncomfortable thing to have a disapproving wife going about to the same restaurants and places. Let us go and sulk in a corner, Phipps, and leave this little comedy here to develop. Farewell, faithless Flossie! Wingate," he concluded, shaking his head gravely, "you have disappointed me."
They passed on. The young lady tossed her head angrily.
"There are times," she announced, "when I hate Lord Dredlinton. I don't know any one who can say such horrid things without being actually rude. I'm sure his wife looks much too good for him," she added generously.
Wingate's nerves were all on edge. He glanced at his watch and rose regretfully to his feet.
"I am afraid," he said, as he led the way towards the exit, "that I must go back to work. Thank you so much for coming and taking pity upon a lonely man, Miss Lane."
"You can have all that sort of pity you like," she whispered.
"Then I shall certainly make demands upon it," he assured her, as they parted at the door.
He found himself presently back in the cool and pleasantly austere surroundings of his sitting room and threw himself into an easy-chair drawn up in front of the wide-flung windows. A strong breeze, against which a flight of seagulls leaned, was stirring the trees in the Embankment Gardens and ruffling the surface of the water. The pall of smoke eastward seemed here and there cloven by a wind-swept avenue of clearer spaces. He felt a sudden and passionate distaste for his recent environment,—the faint perfume which had crept out from the girl's hair and face as she had leaned towards him, the brushing of her clothes against his, the daring exposure of silk stocking, the continual flirtatious appeal of her eyes and lips. He felt himself in revolt against even that faint instinct of toleration which her prettiness and at times subtle advances had kindled in him. He let his thoughts rest upon the more wonderful things which smouldered in his brain and leaped like fire through his veins when he dared to think of them. The room seemed suddenly purified, made fit for her presence.
"I am sure that Mr. Wingate will see me if he is alone," he heard a familiar voice say.
He sprang to his feet, realising in those few moments into what paradise his thoughts had been climbing, and greeted Lady Dredlinton.
Josephine accepted the easy-chair which he wheeled up for her and glanced around the room critically.
"Just what I expected," she murmured. "A nice healthy man's room, without too much furniture, and with plenty of books. You are wondering why I came, of course."