A Butterfly on the Wheel: A Novel

by Guy Thorne; Edward G. Hemmerde; Francis Neilson

A BUTTERFLY ON THE WHEEL

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CHAPTER I

It was shortly after midnight in the great Hôtel des Tuileries at Paris.

Beyond the façade of the hotel the gardens of the Tuileries were sleeping in the warm night. To the left the Louvre etched itself in solid black against the sky, and all up and down the Rue de Rivoli carriages and automobiles were still moving.

But in the great thoroughfare the tide of vehicles and foot passengers was perceptibly thinning. Paris is a midnight city, it is true, and at this hour the heights of Montmartre were thronged with pleasure-seekers, dancing and supping till the pale dawn should come with its message of purity and reproach.

But down in the Rue de Rivoli even the great hotels were beginning to prepare for sleep.

One enters the Hôtel des Tuileries, as every one knows, through the revolving doors, passes into the entresol, and then into the huge glass-domed lounge with its comfortable fauteuils, its big settee, its little tables covered with beaten copper, and its great palms, which seem as if they had been cunningly enamelled jade-green by some jeweller.

The lounge was now almost empty of people, though the shaded electric light threw a topaz-coloured radiance over everything.

In one corner—just where the big marble stair-case springs upwards to the gilded gallery—two men in evening dress were sitting together.

They were obviously English, tall, thin, bronzed men, as obviously in the service. As a matter of fact, one was Colonel Adams, attached to the Viceroy's staff in India, the other a civilian's secretary—Henry Passhe.

They were both smoking briar pipes—delighted that the lateness of the hour allowed them to do so in the lounge; and before each man was a long glass full of crushed ice and some effervescing water innocent of whisky.

A man in black clothes, obviously a valet, came up to Colonel Adams.

"I've put everything ready in your room, sir," he said. "Is there anything else?"

"No, there is nothing else, Snell," the soldier answered. "You can go to bed now."

The man was moving away when Adams called him back.

"Oh, by the way, Snell, did you find out what I asked you? It is Mrs. Admaston who is staying here, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir, she is here with her maid, and——"

"Well?"

The man seemed to hesitate slightly, but at length he spoke: "Mr. Roderick Collingwood is here too, sir."

"Is he, by Jove!" Adams said, more to his friend than to his servant. "Very well, Snell. Good night."

The valet withdrew, and Colonel Adams puffed vigorously at his pipe for a minute or two.

"The—the Mrs. Admaston?" the civilian asked.

Colonel Adams nodded. "The great, little Peggy herself," he said; "none other. Surely you've met her, Passhe?"

"I was introduced to her some months ago at a Foreign Office reception," the younger man answered; "but I really can't say that I know her. I've never been to any of the Admastons' parties. In fact, my dear Adams, I am a little bit out of things in town now. Ask me anything about any of the Indian set and I can tell you, but as far as society goes in London I am a back number. I won't say, though, that I haven't heard this and that about the Admastons. One can't go anywhere without hearing their names. However, I know nothing of the rights or wrongs of the story—if story there is at all. But certainly every one has heard this man Collingwood's name mentioned in connection with that of Mrs. Admaston. Who was she, any way? You know everything about everybody. Tell me all about them."

Colonel Adams sipped his Perrier quietly, and his brown, lean face became unusually meditative.

"Aren't you sleepy?" he said.

"Can't sleep, confound it!" Passhe replied. "Liver. Have lunch, take an afternoon nap, and then can't get to sleep at night for the Lord knows how long."

"I know," Adams said sympathetically. "Liver is the very devil. That's the worst of India. Now, there is nothing, my dear chap, that I should enjoy more at this moment than a two-finger peg of whisky. Can I take it? Damn it, no! I should have heartburn for hours—that's India! But since you are not sleepy, and I am sure I'm not, I will tell you about the Admastons."

The colonel's pipe had gone out. He relit it, pressed down the ashes with the head of a little silver pencil-case which he took from his waistcoat pocket, sent out a cloud of fragrant blue-grey smoke, leant back in his arm-chair, and began.

"Admaston," Colonel Adams began, "is one of the most hard-working Johnnies of the day. He's as rich as what-d'you-call-him, of course, but he hasn't used his wealth to make his position in Parliament or to get him his place in the Cabinet. He's done it by sheer ability, by Jove! He's of an old family, but there haven't been any members of it in big political positions to help him over the heads of those who have to shift for themselves.

"He was at Harrow with me, though considerably my junior, and I remember he played cricket with an energy that deserved a much higher batting average than he got. He wasn't a studious youth by any means, though he learnt enough to know his way about. He was still at school and I had just passed into Sandhurst when his father died and left him a huge fortune. Then he went to Oxford—New College it may have been, or possibly the House. I don't think he did anything much at Oxford. I'm told by men who were up with him that the sense of the enormous responsibility which fell on him after his father's death, and the anxieties of having to manage a great estate and a huge business, spoilt him for the schools and rather put him off cricket. He might have got into the Eleven, but he didn't care enough about it to try hard."

"A bit phlegmatic in temperament?" Passhe asked.

"That's it," replied Colonel Adams. "Nothing seemed to move him much. If ever a man was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, George Admaston was the chap. But I don't believe he cared particularly whether his spoon was silver or pewter, by Jove! Just a plain fellow of frugal habits. I am told that when he met the deputation from the Northern Division of Lancashire, which went up to town to ask him to contest that constituency, after the interview one of the local Johnnies said, 'Mr. Admaston was so nice that he might be nobody.' At anyrate, George has found his métier in politics. Three years in opposition gave him a great reputation as a quick and ready debater. He is a great asset to his party now, and at by-elections he's the night-before-the-poll man."

"But what about his wife?" said the civilian.

"I'm coming to that, Henry," Adams answered. "And if I am a bit long-winded you've jolly well brought it on yourself. It's like this. George's father was the head of Admaston, Grainger & Co., the big City financiers. Old Grainger had a daughter, much younger than George Admaston. Peggy Grainger was only a tiny little girl when Admaston's father died. I'm told that the old men when they were together would chaff each other about their children. Old Grainger used to say that they must certainly marry—keep the firm together, and so on, don't you know. In fact, the last letter that George ever got from his father referred to old Grainger's notion that George should marry Peggy. Now, Peggy's mother was a Frenchwoman, a Mlle. Guillou, and the girl was educated in France. George hadn't been long in the Cabinet when old Grainger brought Peggy to London. She was about nineteen then, and the prettiest, most flirtatious, whimsical little butterfly of a thing that you could possibly imagine. Well, her father established Peggy in a big house in St. James's—huge retinue of servants and so forth. All London began to talk about the rich Miss Grainger. The girl spent just what she liked—her father encouraged her to do it; there was really nothing else to be done with the money. But whenever George came to the house—and he saw a lot of the Graingers the first year when Peggy came to London—the old boy was always hinting to him that he ought to marry Peggy.

"One evening Admaston was called off the Treasury Bench in the House to speak at the telephone. He thought it was Peggy, but it wasn't. It was her old maid, Pauline, who is here with her in this hotel to-night, and who has looked after her all her life nearly. Pauline said that old Grainger had just passed in his cheques, by Jove! He was a big fleshy fellow—always did himself top hole. He'd made a big dinner, laughed at a joke like anything with his daughter, had a stroke, and was cooling by ten o'clock."

"And then?" Henry Passhe asked.

"Well, of course, Peggy was left quite alone. There were no relatives. In fact, there was nobody except this old nurse, Pauline, a woman of about forty. Mrs. Grainger had been a chronic invalid, and she had left the girl in charge of the 'bonne.' Old Grainger often used to say that Pauline was more of a mother to Peggy than even his wife had been, and after his death Peggy relied upon the woman for almost everything. She's been with her ever since, and is more like a mother to her still than a servant. Pauline, in fact, took charge of the household, looked after the servants in every way, and controlled everything. It was a curious ménage.

"One day Peggy and Admaston met at a country house for a week-end party. Nobody knows exactly how it happened, but at anyrate George proposed and Peggy accepted him. I remember the fuss they made about it in the society papers—fulsome, sickenin' sort of hog-wash they wrote. 'Love at first sight,' and all that sort of thing. 'Little Peggy was to be the wife of a Prime Minister'—'they adored each other,' etc. But I'll eat my hand if they did anything of the kind. They simply remembered the wishes of their fathers and saw it was best to consolidate their huge commercial interests. I daresay Peggy felt very lonely and George felt very sorry for her. At anyrate, the engagement was announced.

"George had an aunt—has her still, I suppose—the rich Miss Admaston, a damned old cat who gives thousands to foreign missions. I've met some of the missionaries of her particular gospel-shop in India, and a nice lot of touts they are too. Well, the old cat was fearfully cut up by the news of the engagement. She thought Peggy was far too French and frivolous for George, and, of course, Peggy has always been rather go-ahead. For my part, I don't care what they are saying now, I don't think there is an ounce of vice in the girl.

"It's gettin' rather late, Henry, and I'm afraid I'm boring you?"

"Not a bit; go on, do," the secretary answered.

"Very well. George's engagement to Peggy seriously affected the lives of two people who are deucedly well known in society. One of them was Lady Attwill, widow of 'Clipper' Attwill, who scuppered his yacht and himself too somewhere in the Mediterranean—a thorough bad hat, Clipper was. Lady Attwill had been setting her cap at George for a long time. Every one knew it but George. It was a regular joke of one season. She couldn't get hold of him, though, despite everything she could do. George hadn't an idea of what the woman wanted. He was really fond of her. He looked on her as a very dear friend, and he took all her kindnesses and so forth just in that light, with a calm complacency that must have sent her raving at times. Of course, all Lady Attwill's friends did their very best to bring the two together upon every possible occasion; and when George steered clear and proposed to Peggy, every one said the poor, dear chap was one of the craftiest politicians on the Front Bench. And all the time, Henry, I'll lay you what you like that Admaston was as innocent as a canary.

"There were two people, I said, who were seriously affected by George's engagement. Well, the other was Roderick Collingwood, who's staying in the hotel now, as Snell has just told us.

"Colling—everybody calls him Colling—knew Peggy's governor. He's a bally millionaire also, and he used to have a good many dealings with the firm. Collingwood travels about a great deal—always has done,—and he first met Peggy when she was a flapper of fifteen at old Grainger's place near Chantilly—old Grainger used to run horses a lot in France.

"Collingwood has always been an extraordinary sort of chap; he was then, it appears. Like any other young man of great wealth, he found everything done for him, anything he liked ready to his hand, and simply let himself go. When Peggy's father died, Colling was going it hell-for-leather—just about as fast as they're made. Of course, Peggy knew nothing of the real facts. But she heard gossip and hints, and one night she taxed him with the way he was living, referring specially to one or two of his more recent escapades. He admitted there was some truth in what she said, and, if what they say is true, made her some sort of a promise of reformation. At anyrate, he pulled up; there's no doubt of that.

"Afterwards the two met fairly regularly, and I was staying at Lord Ellerdine's place in Yorkshire when I believe Collingwood told Peggy of the good influence she had been, and showed himself as a reformed rake, by Jove! I think there's no doubt at all that he would have proposed to the girl if George Admaston had not forestalled him. They say Collingwood was frightfully cut up. At anyrate, he wasn't in England when the marriage took place.

"It was a great wedding. Everybody who was anybody was there, only excepting Collingwood and Lady Attwill. In their case, I remember that people said they were falling back on their own reserves; but that was pure scandal, of course. When Collingwood was in Spain, Lady Attwill was in Switzerland. As a matter of fact, they were both great friends; and no doubt when Clipper went down in his yacht and left Lady Attwill very badly off, Collingwood was quite generous to her.

"Well, to cut a long story short—I see it's nearly one o'clock,—Admaston and his wife spent their honeymoon in Italy—Rome, I think it was, or Florence. Shortly after their return George introduced his long and complicated bill on National Roads. It had over a hundred clauses. Ill-natured people said that he married in order to have an excuse to get a holiday in which to draft his measure. At anyrate, after the introduction of the bill George became the absolute centre of the political strife of the day. He worked harder than ever. His party had been in office for three years, and their declining favour urged him on to rouse his followers in the House and in the country to tackle some necessary reforms before the ensuing General Election. In fact, for months after his marriage Admaston seemed to live for his Department and the Front Bench. He was hardly ever seen with Peggy.

"On her part, Peggy went everywhere, and soon the gossips had it that Admaston was disappointed, while his wife lived a really butterfly life.

"Mrs. Admaston's conduct certainly puzzled the gossips. No one could say with any sort of certainty that she did anything wrong. Even her best friends—generally the first persons to give one away—only laughed when they were questioned, and said, 'It's only Peggy.' She and Roderick Collingwood met again and again, renewing their old friendship. After the marriage it was said that Collingwood had a very bad time. There was a broad wicked streak in him, and everybody assumed that he had gone back to his old fast living. Well, at anyrate, Peggy took him up again. She was the kind that either had to be mothered or have someone she could mother herself. George, apparently, wasn't very much about, and so she started once more in the effort to exert a benign influence over an erratic chap like Collingwood. Of course, people said on all sides that it was a very dangerous game to play.

"Old-fashioned people shook their heads and fore-told all sorts of trouble for the little butterfly that fluttered so near to the flame which every one supposed was burning perpetually in Collingwood's heart.

"About this time Lady Attwill returned to England and sought out George Admaston. What she did quite upset the calculations of the people who talk. She became very attentive to George, and yet, at the same time, managed to get about a good bit with Peggy. In fact, she seemed in a sort of way to console Admaston and to be encouraging his wife. Society has been perplexed by the whole business for a considerable time. No one knows what to make of the position. They all met, for instance, at Ellerdine's for the shooting. Admaston ran down for a week-end only. Then during the late winter, after a long autumn session, rumours flew thick and fast, and everybody seemed to be waiting for the storm to break. Why there should be a storm nobody really seemed to know. Collingwood and Peggy have been talked about to the exclusion of almost every other subject. They're talked about now. London and the Faubourg Saint Honoré is buzzing with them. And here, my dear Passhe, you and I away up at the Tuileries for a merry week of theatres in Paris, and we find Peggy staying here and Collingwood, too, by Jove!—what! what! Damn it, Passhe, you're asleep!"

A long-drawn and not entirely unmelodious snore proclaimed that Colonel Adams's long recital had somewhat wearied the civilian, who was not "in society."

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CHAPTER II

Mrs. Admaston's sitting-room at the Hôtel des Tuileries was a large and beautiful apartment, one of the best in the hotel. Save for the long French windows, which were now, at midnight, covered with curtains of green tussore silk, there was nothing distinctively foreign about the room. The best French hotels nowadays have all adopted English and American standards of comfort. The stove, the uncarpeted and slippery parquet floor, the impossible chairs, and a ceiling painted to resemble a nightmare of a fruiterer's shop, are all things of the past.

Electric lights in softly shaded globes threw a pleasant yellow radiance over everything. A fire of cedarwood logs glowed on the tiled hearth, and a great bunch of lilac stood in a copper bowl upon a small mahogany table which was placed between two doors which faced the one leading to Mrs. Admaston's bedroom.

Some tall silver candlesticks stood upon the Broadwood piano; and there were others, in which the candles were not lit, upon brackets on either side of the telephone.

It was just upon midnight when the door of Mrs. Admaston's bedroom opened and her confidential maid and companion came into the room. Pauline Toché was a woman of some forty years of age. Her black hair streaked with grey was drawn tightly back from her forehead. The face, a little hard and watchful perhaps, nevertheless showed signs of marked intelligence. The eyes had something of the ferocity but also the fidelity of a well-trained watch-dog. She was dressed unassumingly enough in black, and she wore an apron also of some black material.

Such a face and figure may be seen a dozen times in any Breton village, and more than once her friends had said to Mrs. Admaston that Pauline seemed to require the coif of her country—the snowy white and goffered col which is worn over the shoulders; a pair of sabots even!

The maid was a Breton woman, a daughter of one of the millers of Pont-Aven, and preserved still all the characteristics of that hardy Celtic race.

As the maid entered the sitting-room there was a knock at the door, and in response to her "Entrez" a waiter came into the room. He was an odd-looking person with brilliant red hair—rather a rare thing in France, but cropped close to his head in the French manner, so that it seemed to be almost squirting out of his scalp. The man, with his napkin over his arm, his short Eton jacket, and boots soled with list, was dressed just like any other waiter in the hotel, but somehow or other there was something unusual in his aspect.

He carried a tray, and went up to a small round table, gleaming with cut-glass and silver, on which supper had been laid.

"Are you quite sure there is no train from Chalons before morning?" Pauline asked the man in French.

"No train before five o'clock, mademoiselle," the man replied. "The last fast train reaches Paris at eight-forty."

The Breton woman nodded.

"Thank you," she said, gazing at him rather keenly; and then suddenly—"You're not French, are you?"

With great precision, almost as if he was practising something learnt by rote and not entirely natural to him, the waiter clicked his heels together, spread out the palms of his hands, and bowed.

"Mais oui, mademoiselle," he said.

Pauline shook her head slightly.

"You do not deceive me," she said. "There is something about you—you are a Frenchman?"

The waiter had been piling plates up on a tray. He put the tray down on the table, smiled with a total change of manner, and answered her.

"No," he said with a grin.

"I knew it," Pauline said. "Is it then that you are Irish, M. Jacques?"

"Most certainly not," replied the waiter.

"I figure to myself that you are English?"

Jacques came up still closer to the maid, his voice dropped, and his manner became confidential. "Not even quite English, mademoiselle," he said. "I'm a Scotsman. I was born at Ecclefechan."

"Mon Dieu!" said Pauline; "Eccle——! What a name of barbarity! I did not know that there were such names. La! la! But your name, monsieur, your name—Jacques?"

"Mademoiselle speaks English?"

"Quite well," Pauline replied.

"Well, you see, miss, I've been here a long time, and I am a great favourite with the English visitors. It would never do to tell them that I'm a Scotsman, and that my real name is Jock. You see, they like to practise their French on me. The management always send me to wait upon English visitors. Of course, I can understand what they mean, and it flatters them to think that they're really speaking French. I heard an old lady the other day talking to her daughter. 'My dear,' she said, 'those extra French lessons at the High School have not been wasted. That nice, attentive French waiter understands you perfectly'; and so I did of course, miss, though when she wanted the mussels she said, 'Esker voos avvy des moulins?' And when she wanted the pastry she called it 'tapisserie' instead of 'patisserie.' So you see my French name is one of my great assets, though you, mademoiselle, saw through me very easily." Here the waiter once more relapsed into his best French manner and made a flourishing little bow. "Do you stay long in Paris, mademoiselle?" he asked, going back to the table and beginning to remove the dishes.

"I can't say," Pauline replied. "As a matter of fact, we are here quite by accident. We are really going to Switzerland."

"The wrong train?" inquired the waiter.

"Yes, that was it," Pauline answered. "We took the wrong train, and our party got divided somewhere."

"What bad luck!" Jacques answered. Then he gave a rather searching glance at Pauline. "But surely M. Collingwood knows the Continent?" he asked.

The maid gave an almost imperceptible start, and went up to the fireplace, where she began to pull about the flowers in one of the vases. "Oh yes, I think so," she answered, in a voice which strove to appear quite indifferent to the question.

"Well, I can tell you," the waiter went on—"I can tell you that M. Collingwood knows the Continent as well as a Cook's agent. He's always travelling about. You can see his name in the Riviera lists, in the Paris Daily Mail or the New York Herald. He's at Nice for the races. He's at Monte Carlo for the pigeon-shooting. He's at Marienbad for a cure, or climbing mountains in the Bernese Oberland. He is everywhere, is M. Collingwood. He was staying here last year, for instance."

The maid turned slowly from the fire and looked towards the supper-table.

"Yes, yes?" she said with some eagerness. "He is here often? At this hotel?"

"I can remember him being here three times," the man replied. And there was something rather furtive in his look, something which seemed to speak of a suppressed curiosity and watchfulness. Many waiters in smart hotels, both in London and in Paris, have this look—the veritable expression of Paul Pry. "Have you been long with Mr. and Mrs. Admaston?"

"I've been many years with madame," Pauline replied. And then, speaking rather suddenly, "You seem to have a very good memory, Mr. Jock Jacques."

"It is necessary," the man answered, with all the dryness of a Scotsman.

"And yet sometimes," Pauline replied, "it is necessary not to have a good memory."

"Perhaps," the waiter answered. "Certainly sometimes discretion is the better part of recollection," giving her a look of great slyness as he spoke.

Pauline shrugged her shoulders. There was a note of veiled contempt in her voice. "To forget easily is sometimes very convenient, n'est-ce pas?" she said.

"When it is worth more than a good memory," he answered.

"Doubtless you are very well off, Mr. Jock," Pauline continued, and this time the sneer in her voice was hardly veiled.

At this the waiter began brushing the crumbs from the table very vigorously. "I'm only a poor waiter," he said.

"Then surely that must be your own fault? There ought to be many opportunities in a hotel of this sort of making a good use of a convenient memory?"

"Well, yes, you're right there," came from the man, with a rather ill-favoured leer. "But, you see, I am too sentimental for that."

Pauline laughed in answer, and not very pleasantly. "Don't tell me," she said. "I've been in Scotland for the shooting of the grouse. There is no Scotsman too sentimental to make money. What part of Scotland did you say you came from? La! la! la! And at your age, too!"

"On the contrary, the older I grow the more sentimental I become."

Pauline shook her head. "Mon Dieu!" she said; "every one knows that sentiment ends at forty."

The waiter, a quick-witted rogue enough, seemed to be thoroughly enjoying this midnight conversation. He stood with one arm akimbo, the other resting on the table, and grinned like a vulgar Mephistopheles. "If sentiment ends at forty," he said, "you, mademoiselle, will suffer from it for a long time to come."

"Ma foi, no! No suffering for me," Pauline replied. "I'm a very practical person. It would take a great deal to make me sentimental."

"I wonder how much?" the man answered. "A nice little hotel with a good trade, say?"

Pauline shrugged her shoulders. "No, that would mean work. I am used to seeing a life of sentiment without work."

The waiter once more began to clear the table. "It is a pity we see so much of what we cannot have," he answered, rattling the coffee-cups and silver.

Pauline made no reply to this, but stood by the fireplace in silence watching the waiter, and showing plainly by her manner that the conversation was over and that she was waiting for him to go.

Suddenly she started violently, as Jacques did also.

The heavy mahogany door leading to the corridor outside was flung open, and a short, thick-set, bearded Frenchman came briskly into the room. There was nothing particularly remarkable about him. He might have been an ordinary commercial traveller, save for a pair of singularly alert eyes, which glanced rapidly hither and thither and took in the whole room in one comprehensive sweep. This was done with lightning-like rapidity, and then the fellow's face assumed an expression of great surprise—a little bit overdone and too forced to seem real.

"A thousand pardons!" he said, with a bow. "The wrong room! My mistake! I am very sorry. Accept my apologies."

With that he once more glanced round the room and left it, though with not quite the alacrity of his entrance, closing the door quietly behind him.

But into the quiet room something strangely disturbing had come.

It was no longer a confidential maid gossiping with the casual waiter of a smart hotel. The air, which had before been charged with little suspicions, toy fencings, as it were, between people of no great importance, was now informed with something more pressing, more imminent, more real.

Pauline herself positively staggered back from the fireplace towards the table, and nearer to the waiter. Her brown face became grey, she seemed for a moment to lose control of herself, while the ferret eyes of the waiter watched her with an excited glitter in them.

"That man!" ... The exclamation came from Pauline almost like a cry. "That man!"

Jacques was all bent to attention. He hurried up to the woman. "Yes, yes?" he said.

"Do you know who he is?" Pauline asked. "Have you seen him before, M. Jacques?"

The man watched her keenly. "I don't know, mademoiselle," he answered in a guarded voice.

"That man, I say—have you seen him before?... I remember."

The waiter hastened to agree, obviously wishing to discover the reason of Pauline's agitation.

"Yes," he said. "Now you mention it, mademoiselle, I remember too. He was outside—there—in the corridor—just after I had shown M. Collingwood and you and madame to your rooms."

"Was that when we arrived?" Pauline asked. Her brown hands were trembling, her eyes were informed with anxiety.

Jacques bent his head forward. The two were vis-à-vis—he watched her intently.

"Yes," he answered.

Then Pauline seemed to lose all her caution. She threw up her hands and her face became wrinkled with excitement.

"La! la!" she cried, "but he was looking at madame's boxes at Boulogne...."

With quiet but hurried steps she went up to the door leading to the corridor, turned the handle gently, flung it open and gazed out.

There was obviously nobody there, for in a moment she returned, closed the door, and once more confronted the waiter with a grey and troubled face.

"Que diable fait-il?" she said in a frightened voice. "But M. Jacques, what can it mean?"

Again the ugly leer came over the garçon's face. "Sentiment," he said.

The middle-aged Breton woman pressed both hands to her heart with one of those wild and expressive Celtic gestures which seem so exaggerated to English folk, but which are, nevertheless, so truly expressive of emotion.

"Madame!" she cried.

"I was not thinking of madame," Jacques answered quickly.

As if clutching at a hope, Pauline made a tremendous effort to get in key with her tormentor.

"No, no!" she said with an affectation of brightness. "What? Is it that you were thinking of me? Merci!—that would be funny!"

"Sans doute. That's what they say in England when they advertise 'No followers.'"

The woman caught the last word. Her face had been strained in anxious thought.

"Followers!" she said. "Even the English do not expect followers from London to Paris."

By this time Jacques had filled his tray, had folded up the shining white table-cloth and placed it over his pyramid of plates.

"Mademoiselle is too modest," he said, moving towards the door, but still watching Pauline intently.

The creature's ears seemed literally to twitch with greed of news as he crossed the great quiet room.

Pauline was speaking to herself. "It's queer," she said. "I do not like that. Everything has gone wrong to-day. First we nearly missed the train. Then on the boat we were all seasick. Then the douanier was a suspicious fool. Then at Boulogne we got on the wrong train and lost Lord Ellerdine and Lady Attwill——"

A little hard chuckle of amusement came from the retiring waiter, and as Pauline turned to him in indignation a distant voice called her name:

"Pauline!"

"Madame!"

"Good night, mademoiselle," the waiter said, one hand supporting the heavy tray, the other upon the handle of the door. "Good night, mademoiselle. Remember that Jock from Ecclefechan has a good memory."

Pauline was trembling, but she turned to the fellow. "Good night, Jock from——" She spluttered in her throat, laughed artificially, shut the door after the man, and then turned eagerly towards the door which led to Mrs. Admaston's bedroom.

There was a note of tremendous relief in her voice as she cried out "Madame!" once more.

The door from the bedroom opened and Mrs. Admaston entered.

She was a slim, girlish-looking woman, with a cascade of long dark hair falling over her shoulders.

The face was small, the complexion of it rose-brown, the eyes dark wells of laughing light, the lips twin rosebuds with a sense of humour.

She was wearing a long wrap, half tea-gown, half dressing-gown, of topaz-coloured silk, and round her slender waist was a cord of light-blue and gold threads ending in two large tassels of gold.

Now there was something half tired, half petulant, and wholly puzzled about her face as she swept into the room.

"It's no use," she said in a rippling musical voice; "it isn't a bit of use, Pauline! I can't go to sleep. In fact, I'm not in the least sleepy."

She looked round the room and sighed.

"What a barn of a place this is!" she said. "I hate those green curtains. They're so horribly conscious of the colour scheme. And then the topaz-shaded lights over the lamps—it's all so dreadfully wearing. And in my room, too, Pauline, it's simply horrid. It reminds me of a sarcophagus, or a mausoleum, or some appalling place like that. And the bed is too low! I don't think much of this room, but after all it's nicer in here."

She sank down with a sigh into an arm-chair.

"Yes," she said once more, "it really is much nicer in here. Make me cosy, Pauline, and do my hair."

She had brought two ivory brushes into the room, and placed them on the table. Now she pointed to them with a little hand as sweetly, faintly pink as the inside of a sea-shell. The light caught the broad wedding ring of dull gold as she did so.

Pauline took up the brushes and went up to her mistress. "I thought you wouldn't like the bed," she said, with the brusque familiarity of an old servant and friend. "In fact, I knew you wouldn't like it directly we arrived. You always wanted to sleep up in the air."

"Tiens, Pauline! I don't want to sleep anywhere to-night. Soothe me, make me comfortable. Be a good Pauline!"

The elder woman took up the brushes and stroked the shining hair with tender, loving hand. "It's been an upsetting day," she said.

Mrs. Admaston gave a sigh of relief as the kind hands busied themselves about her hair.

"Upsetting!" she cried; "that's it—just the word. I am upset. Everything has been upset. Lord Ellerdine will be fearfully upset. Oh, Pauline, just fancy our getting into the wrong train!"

The maid did not answer anything, but went on with her work.

"It was all owing to that fool of a Customs officer," the girl continued in a less strained voice. "And turning my things upside down! The way he upset my clothes was perfectly disgraceful. And before Mr. Collingwood, too! And all for half a dozen boxes of cigarettes! Keeping us there, paying their beastly tariff, until the last moment!"

Pauline put the brushes down upon the table and came round to the front of the chair. She looked critically at her mistress's hair. "Yes," she said; "but, after all, it was very lucky the porters put the boxes in the Paris train."

"Wasn't it?"

"Yes, madame."

"What a bit of luck!"

Pauline left her mistress for a moment and went into the bedroom. She returned with a bottle of eau-de-cologne and a handkerchief. Sprinkling some of the spirit upon it, she held it to Mrs. Admaston's forehead.

"There!" she said. "You seem tired, my dear; that will do you good. It was very clever of Mr. Collingwood not to have your boxes registered at Charing Cross."

For a moment or two Peggy Admaston leant back in the arm-chair with closed eyes. "Yes, wasn't it?" she said drowsily. There was a pause for a moment or two, and then suddenly the girl twisted round in her chair, caught hold of the elder woman's arm and looked at her searchingly.

"Pauline! what did you mean then?" she said.

"What did I mean, madame?" Pauline asked.

Peggy nodded. "Do you think—well, I suppose he forgot?"

Pauline raised her eyebrows. "Eh, bien," she said, "they do not as a rule let you forget to register at Charing Cross."

Peggy rose from the chair and began to walk up and down the sitting-room. Her little bronze bedroom slippers peeped in and out from her trailing draperies of topaz-coloured silk. One slender wrist was clasped by an old Moorish bracelet of dull silver, the intricate filigree work studded here and there with Balas rubies. With her long hair coiled loosely in a shining coronet upon her head, her whole expression—an atmosphere she exhaled—of sprightly innocence, she seemed indeed a fragile little butterfly. Something of the sort crossed the mind of the faithful Breton woman. She sighed, and unperceived her hand went up to her bodice, where she wore a little silver cross.

Suddenly Peggy stopped and turned towards the maid.

"Pauline," she said, "you naughty old thing! I do believe you suspect something."

"No, madame," Pauline answered quickly, and there was something almost sulky in her tone.

Peggy went up to her and put her bare white arm upon her shoulder, leaning upon her caressingly.

"You do," she said. "Oh, but I know you do! When you say 'No, madame,' like that, I always know that there's something wrong."

"I only think of you, chèrie," Pauline said, holding the little hand, which was like a thing of carved ivory.

Peggy gave a half-sigh and once more began to walk up and down the room.

"You old silly, I know well that you only think of me," she said; "but tell me, what is it?"

"What is what?"

Peggy smiled mischievously. "There again!" she said. "That's just the way you do when you want me to coax you. Pauline, be nice to me! Now, what is it? Tell me what you suspect. What about the boxes?"

"Well, I do not like Lady Attwill," Pauline replied slowly.

"Oh, but Pauline!" she said.

"It is no use, madame; I cannot be two-faced with you. I am not able to conceal anything. I must speak straight out. I never could hide anything from you, and now it is no use trying. I really can't do it."

Her voice had risen towards that high and almost whining note of excitement and protest which is so peculiarly characteristic of the Bretons.

"Good gracious! what an outburst for you! What has Lady Attwill done? What on earth has she to do with the boxes?"

Pauline made a gesture with her hands. "But what an innocent!" she said, in half-humorous despair. "You never see things. You are just as confiding—I mean ignorant of people—as you were when you were twelve years old. Madame, Lady Attwill is no friend of yours."

"But that is absurd, Pauline," Peggy answered. "Lady Attwill is devoted to me. I am certain of it."

The maid wrinkled up her face, pushed out her lips, and nodded her head to emphasise her words. "Indeed! indeed, madame! Well, tell me this. Would she have kept dodging Lord Ellerdine out of the way at Charing Cross and afterwards at Boulogne if she was your friend?"

Peggy pouted. "I suppose she wanted to be alone with Lord Ellerdine," she said.

"Jamais! she can be alone with him at her flat—she need not wait to be alone with him at a public railway station."

Peggy laughed mischievously. "I suppose, Pauline, you think that's one to you," she said.

"Tais-toi!" said the old woman, both voice and manner growing more serious every moment.

"Well, go on," Peggy replied petulantly.

Pauline's voice became as impressive as she knew how to make it.

"I am sure Lady Attwill knew that Mr. Collingwood did not want Lord Ellerdine in the way. At Boulogne it was just the same. Lady Attwill's things were examined quickly, and then off she went with Lord Ellerdine in the Swiss express, and we didn't see them again. She went out of sight. Now, tell me, was not that strange?"

"Heavens! how hot it is!" Peggy said. "Shall I have a cigarette? Yes, I really think I will. Fetch me my cigarette-case, Pauline. It is on the dressing-table in my bedroom."

In a moment the Breton woman returned with a dainty little case of gold with a monogram of sapphires in one corner. Peggy took a cigarette, lit it, and inhaled a breath of the fragrant smoke with great satisfaction. Then she began her noiseless walk up and down the room again.

"Certainly," she said suddenly, "Lady Attwill is not a person to go out of sight for nothing."

Pauline sneered. "Oh, miladi is a convenience," she said. "M. Collingwood has only to raise his little finger and she will do anything."

"You mean that she is fond of him?"

"Of his money, rather."

"Pauline, that is really perfectly awful of you."

Again Pauline sneered. "She's a poor widow, madame. Lord Attwill left her nothing. Oh, I know! I always find out. She has a flat at three hundred pounds, an electric brougham, a box at the opera, and a little place at Henley. Lord Ellerdine is not so rich as that. M. Collingwood is very rich—very—very—very."

Peggy stopped in her walk now and faced Pauline, who had been sitting upon the settee. "You mean she gets money from Mr. Collingwood?" she asked.

The maid rose and came up to her mistress, touching her arm imploringly. "Oh, madame," she said with deep feeling, "do be careful. I think only of you. Don't trust Lady Attwill. She is no friend of yours. She has never forgiven you for marrying M. Admaston, and she would bring mischief between you both if she could."

"Pauline, you mustn't say that," Peggy replied gently.

"But, madame, it is true. She wanted to marry monsieur herself, and she is mad because you came in her way. And if she can get you out of her way she will."

"Pauline, you are terrible," Peggy said, still in the same light voice, and with a half-pitying, half-humorous smile such as one gives to an importunate child.

The maid took no notice. "Remember, madame," she went on, "it was Lady Attwill who planned this trip to the Engadine. It was her idea to go with Lord Ellerdine and M. Collingwood. And now where are we? I ask you, where are we? In Paris, and she and Lord Ellerdine in the express near Switzerland by now. Madame, listen to me! Let us go home to-morrow; make some excuse to M. Collingwood—any will do."

At last the Butterfly seemed a little impressed. There was such real earnestness, so much underlying meaning, in Pauline's voice that she paused and her eyes became thoughtful.

"It does seem strange," she said.

Pauline nodded. "N'est-ce pas? I feel as if you were in a trap."

The girl shivered, and her voice became pleading. "Oh, Pauline, do watch me! Look after me! I have no one now but you!"

The old bonne kissed the delicate, shrinking little figure. "La! la!" she said. "With my last breath I will shield you! Nevertheless, you are a mischief and make some men mad. Oh, the things they say about you! But it is only play."

"Only play?"

"That is all, chèrie; I am sure of it."

Peggy went up to the fireplace. "Sometimes," she said, "I think it is very foolish play. I only hope that it won't end in tears." She looked down at the logs—smouldering now and with no more flame of rose-pink and amethyst.

"Tears? For you? Never!"

Peggy turned half round. "Pauline—I am going to be sensible. I shall turn over a new leaf. I shall become a grande dame, give great entertainments, hold court at Admaston House in Hampshire, and at Castle Netherby—then I shall not have time to make men mad!"

Pauline clapped her hands. "That will be splendid!" she said. "That will make him so happy!"

"Who, my husband?"

"Exactement. Monsieur adores you."

"I wonder?" Peggy said slowly, more to herself than to Pauline.

The maid nodded. "Madame," she went on, "he is a great big dog. You can do anything with him. He will never bite nor snarl, nor show even a little bit of his teeth."

"Perhaps it would be better if he would," Peggy replied in a rather broken voice. "I am so lonely, Pauline. Sometimes I think that his politics don't leave even a little corner for me."

"Bien!" said Pauline with a chuckle. "You would not feel lonely, madame, unless you loved him."

Peggy went up to the piano, which was open, and struck two or three resonant chords. "Certainly there is something in that," she said musingly.

"Yes, madame," Pauline replied, "he is a man, and you are proud of him. He is so different from all the others."

Peggy's idle fingers rattled out a little trilling catch from the Chanson Florian. Suddenly she stopped and turned her head swiftly. "You do not like Mr. Collingwood?" she asked, watching Pauline's face intently.

"Ma Doue!" Pauline answered in her native Breton, "but I like M. Collingwood well enough. All the women that there are like M. Collingwood. He is a terrible flirt, but he is not wicked. But madame must be careful, that is all. He loves madame not as he loves the others."

Peggy closed the lid of the piano with a bang. "Now, Pauline," she said, "don't be silly. Off you go to bed. I feel ever so much better now."

The maid gathered up the brushes and the bottle of eau-de-cologne from the table and took them into Mrs. Admaston's room. Then she returned. "Good night, madame," she said. "If you want me, that little bell there rings in my room. Boone nuit. Dormez bien, chèrie."

She kissed her mistress and left the room.

Peggy remained alone.

---

CHAPTER III

Mrs. Admaston pulled aside the long curtains of green silk. She turned the oblong handle which released two of the windows, pulled it towards her, and drank in the fresh night air.

How fragrant and stimulating it was. How pure, and how different from the horrid, scented air of the sitting-room!

"'From the cool cisterns of the midnight air my spirit drinks repose,'" Peggy quoted to herself; and she did, indeed, seem to be bathed by a sweet and delicate refreshment, a cleansing, reviving air, which washed all hot and feverish thoughts away and made her one with the stainless spirit of the night.

The black masses—the black, blotted masses—of the trees in the Tuileries gardens cut into the sky-line. But even now, late as it was, innumerable lights twinkled over Paris, and a big honey-coloured moon, which shamed the firefly lights below, and seemed almost like a harvest moon, had risen and was staring down upon the City of Pleasure.

In front of the window was a balcony, and, lightly clad as she was, the girl went out upon it and with an impulsive gesture stretched out her arms to where the Lamp of the night, depended from a little drift of fleecy-white and amber-coloured clouds, swung over Paris.

"O moon," she said, "dear, round, red moon, I am going to be good! I really, really am. I am going to turn over a new leaf; I am going...."

There was a sharp whirr, hard, metallic, and insistent, from the room behind.

The telephone bell was ringing.

Peggy started—the world called her back. In her mind, as it were, she put down her good resolutions on the balcony and hurried in to see who had rung her up.

She fluttered up to the telephone, caught the receiver to her ear, and spoke breathlessly:

"Well, who is it? What? Yes. Who is it? Oh! Where are you? Chalons! You have arrived, then? What?"

A voice, not over the telephone wire, but behind her and in the room, came to Peggy's disengaged ear.

She started violently and turned round as if upon a pivot.

She saw standing before her a slim, tall, clean-shaved man, anywhere between thirty and forty. He was in evening clothes—that is to say, he wore a dinner jacket and black tie. His hair was dark and curly and grew low upon his forehead; his eyebrows were beautifully pencilled; and below them two shrewd, mocking, and yet somehow simple and merry eyes of a brilliant grey looked out upon Mrs. Admaston. The nose was aquiline; the lips, a trifle full, were nevertheless beautifully shaped. They were parted now in a smile.

"Who is it? Let me speak, Peggy?" Collingwood said.

Peggy looked at him. "Oh, how you startled me!" she cried, with a little shriek of alarm and embarrassment. Then without a further word she fluttered towards the door of her bedroom, dropping the receiver of the telephone, which hung by its twisted cord and swung this way and that.

Roderick Collingwood took a couple of quick, decisive steps to the wall. He caught up the receiver.

"Hello! That you, Ellerdine? Yes, just finished supper. What? What? 2.34 to-night—I mean this morning? What time do you reach Paris? What?—five o'clock?"

He turned round to Peggy, who was standing by her bedroom door. "They are coming on here," he said.

"Now?" the girl asked.

"Yes! they get here at five." He caught up the receiver again and pressed it to his ear, leaning forward to the mouthpiece.

"I say, Ellerdine—I say, why not wait for us at Chalons? What? You have decided not to go on? Very well. We will wait for you."

He placed the receiver of the telephone back upon its rest, and turned the handle to ring off. Then he looked at Peggy, walking slowly towards her as he spoke.

"Ellerdine is vexed," he said.

Peggy's face was the most alluring pink, her eyes looked angry.

"Please leave the room," she said.

Collingwood stopped. "I am sorry," he said. "I heard the telephone ring, and before I knew where I was...."

Peggy cut him short, pointing to the door on the left-hand side of the room, the door not far from that which led into the corridor. "Is that your room?" taking a couple of steps towards him.

"Yes," the dark man answered; "the hotel was full—it was the only room left. Don't be vexed, Peggy."

The girl's face had a sort of hard impatience in it, though mingled with something else also—something very difficult to define. "Wait," she said. "That door was locked when I tried it before you came in to supper. Did you unlock it?"

Mr. Collingwood laughed a pleasant, musical laugh, which seemed to resolve the somewhat tragic note of Mrs. Admaston's voice into nothing—to make it seem rather unnecessary and absurd. It was a thoroughly boyish laugh.

"Why, Peggy," he said, "what a very serious mood you are in! Unlock it? Of course I unlocked it, when I heard you at the telephone. I thought you would not mind. Besides, I wanted to know what Ellerdine was up to. Come, come, Peggy; this is not the first time we have been together so late."

Peggy looked at him with wide eyes. "Oh, but it is different," she said; "we are in a strange hotel—by accident. Colling, it was by accident, wasn't it?"

He started, bent forward a little, and answered her with great eagerness.

"Of course, of course; surely you did not think——"

"Oh, I don't know what I thought; but I feel so funny, so nervous."

Collingwood laughed again—really, it was the most reassuring and musical laugh. "Peggy nervous?"

"Well, it is rather alarming," Peggy replied.

Collingwood laughed once more, and stepped up towards her. "But rather nice—isn't it rather nice?—what, Peggy?"

There was something so irresistibly amusing in his voice and smile that Mrs. Admaston began to bubble over with laughter.

"Isn't it rather nice?" he went on, crossing over to the little switch-board and putting out the big central light which depended from the roof. "Isn't it rather nice?"

Peggy had entrenched herself behind the little table on which supper had been laid. She was obviously tremendously amused, but she made a great effort to be serious. "Colling!" she said, "it is mad. Supposing anybody knew!"

Collingwood was quite calm. He treated the whole thing as if it were the most ordinary occasion. He strolled lazily over to the fireplace, took a cigarette-case from his pocket, a cigarette from it, and struck a light.

"How can anyone know?" he asked.

Peggy seemed alarmed once more.

"No! Colling, please don't light a cigarette. It is too late. I must go to bed."

Collingwood's only answer was to blow out a cloud of smoke, to cross over to the sofa and throw himself upon it.

"Not yet," he said. "Don't be unkind, Peggy. Just one cigarette. Just one, in front of the fire—which, by the way, is out,—and then bye-byes."

"Well, one cigarette, but only one," Peggy said.

Collingwood sat up. "Good little Peggy," he said in a low, quiet voice; and then, raising his head, he looked at her intently with his brilliant grey eyes.

Peggy looked him straight in the face also, and then the spirit of mischief, the excitement of this odd meeting, got the better of her prudence. She came to the back of the sofa and leant over it. "Isn't Peggy going to have one?" she said.

The man took his cigarette-case from his waistcoat pocket, opened it, and gave her a cigarette. Her face was tantalisingly close to his, and she noticed, well enough, that his hand was trembling as he did so. She kept her face close to his just half a moment longer than the situation required.

Collingwood's voice began to shake also. "Now, Peggy, you little devil," he said.

"Why is Peggy a little devil?"

With a slim brown hand, which, despite all the man's sang-froid, still shook like a leaf in the wind, he lit the cigarette for the girl, looking up into her face as he did so.

"Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Called Robin Goodfellow."

There came a little bubble of laughter from Peggy, which seemed to remove all diffidence from Collingwood. "How are you, my friend Puck?" he said.

Peggy perched herself upon the head of the sofa. "Oh, Puck was an imp of mischief," she said.

"Well?" he asked.

The girl puffed her cigarette contentedly for a few seconds; then she bent towards him, swinging her little brown-shoed foot. "Tell me, Colling," she asked: "why weren't my boxes registered?"

"Well—of all the suspicious little demons I ever came across! Registered?"

"Yes, registered."

"Well, I suppose that fool of a porter at Charing Cross forgot to do it," Collingwood replied.

"It was a bit of luck, wasn't it?" Peggy said.

Collingwood seemed to be thinking of something else. He was gazing at the end of his cigarette and not looking at her at all. "Yes," he said in an absent-minded voice.

"I wonder——" Peggy went on; and then suddenly she stopped, and Collingwood looked up with a start.

"I wonder," Peggy continued, "what the Attwill will think?"

"Think?" he answered. "She can jolly well think what she likes."

"I don't much mind what she thinks," Peggy said; "but I'll bet she's put some rotten idea into Ellerdine's head. Colling, I don't like her—really I don't."

Although Peggy did not notice it, the man's voice became slightly strained. The lips assumed an appearance of somewhat exaggerated indifference, but there was a glint of watchfulness in the eyes.

"You don't like Lady Attwill?" he said.

"That's it," Peggy replied. "Where does she get her money from?"

Collingwood started slightly. The girl did not notice it. "I don't know," he said a little uneasily.

"Is that true, Colling?" Peggy asked, with mischief in her eyes.

"By the way, has she any?" Collingwood asked.

"Well, if she hasn't, how does she do it?"

"By her wits, my dear."

"Ellerdine doesn't go in for wits," Peggy remarked.

"Poor, dear Dicky! he is the diplomatic failure of the century."

"I suppose he is, but it is an ill wind that blows nobody good. The Empire's loss is Attwill's gain."

Collingwood laughed. "Well," he said, "she's the only post he has been able to keep."

"I don't know that he can afford to keep anything. Can he be in love with her, do you think?"

Collingwood puffed slowly at his cigarette.

"My dear Peggy," he said, looking her up and down with a curious meditative gaze—"my dear Peggy, if a man loves a woman he doesn't leave a comfortable hotel to travel all night in a slow train with her. Ellerdine is as likely to spend his money on a home for lost cats as on the Attwill."

"She's a very attractive cat," Peggy said.

"He doesn't care two straws about her," Collingwood replied quite definitely.

"Then why did he come?"

"To please you—for no other reason."

"Anyway, I don't like her," Peggy said. "Do you? I believe you do, Colling."

Collingwood jumped up from the sofa. "Now, stop that, Peggy," he said.

The glint of mischief in Peggy's eyes glowed more strongly. "She's a very attractive woman," she said.

"Well, she's not the sort of woman who attracts me," Collingwood replied, sitting down again upon the couch and tapping impatiently with his foot upon the carpet. He seemed disturbed, uneasy, under the influence of some suppressed emotion.

Peggy stroked her nose with one little finger, and then she leant down towards Collingwood. "What sort of woman attracts you?" she said in a low voice.

Again the man jumped up, and a keen observer would have noticed that tiny beads of perspiration had come out upon his forehead like seed pearls.

"Peggy," he cried, "you are a tantalising little fiend!"

Peggy shook with laughter. She was absolutely happy. "I suppose I ought not to have said that," she bubbled.

"Why not?" he asked, and into his voice came something of deep yearning, and the note of passion restrained till now, broke through all reserves and all defences at last.

"Why not?" he said. Again his voice grew in emotional force and power. "Why not, Peggy? I love you when you are in this mood. I love you in all your moods, dear."

Peggy slid down from the end of the sofa and moved a little way towards the door of her bedroom. "What about that cigarette?" she asked, and there was a distinct note of nervousness in her voice.

She had provoked the beginnings of passion, and, having done so, womanlike, she was startled and afraid.

"Cigarette," he said. "Oh, I haven't finished it yet. But listen! Peggy darling, you must listen!"

She was really startled now. "Not to-night, Colling; you promised," she said. "Now, Colling, go—please go!"

"I can't go, Peggy; I love you so!" he answered.

"Please, Colling, don't talk like that!"

Now his voice became almost dogged, though it lost nothing of its power. "I can't help it," he said; "I love you!"

The girl clutched nervously at her tea-gown and shrank back nearer yet to the door.

"Don't talk of love," she said in a low voice.

He took three quick steps up to her, and again she shrank away, not this time into the sure defence of her bedroom, but towards the window.

"Don't talk of love?" he said, and his voice reverberated and rang with feeling. "Why not? It is in the air—the very night is charged with love. You cannot look out on a night like this and not think of love."

"Don't, Colling; you frighten me," she said.

"Oh, but why should my love frighten you, my Peggy? My darling, it is brightness, tenderness, and love that you want. I know how monotonous and dull your life must be. Good God! don't I know it? Am I not always thinking of it? Poor little Butterfly! What a flutter you make to be free, to warm your dainty wings in sunny places! Peggy, sweetheart, I want to show you the sunny places."

"Please go, Colling!" she said, and her flute-like voice was tremulous with fear. "Please go, Colling! It isn't fair. I am afraid. You see, I am so fond of you, and I am such a little Butterfly!"

He held out his hands towards her, palms upwards, with a curious foreign gesture which showed how greatly he was moved. "I can't go, Peggy," he said. "I want you so badly—want you for my own—to-night—to-morrow, all the nights and all the days. I have been very good. I have always done what you have told me. I have come and gone just exactly as the whim has struck you. Ah! you know how deeply, how dearly I love you!"

She moved past him with a sudden, gliding step, and placed the settee between them.

"I only know you are my friend, my very dear friend," she said.

"No! no! no!" he cried, coming after her.

"Yes—only that friend!"

"Lover! Peggy," he said passionately. "I am a man—devoured by love of you. I have waited for you—longed for you—and now——" With a sudden movement he caught her in his arms, straining her to him wildly, showering kisses upon the shining coronet of her hair. "We're alone, Peggy," he cried, "just you and I!" and his voice rang with triumph. "We're alone! There are no others in the world—no others! You are mine, Peggy, mine at last!"

She struggled in his arms, her face pale as linen, her voice with a note of almost shrill alarm.

"Colling, I can't bear it—you will spoil everything. Do help me, Colling! I don't love you like that. I'm sorry if it hurts you. I'd rather die."

There was a note in her voice of such absolute sincerity, mingled with fear, that he opened his arms and let her flutter away.

The passion upon his face changed and melted into something else.

"My God!" he cried. "You would rather die——"

He stumbled rather than walked towards the sofa and sat down upon it, burying his face in his long lean hands, that trembled exceedingly.

"My God!" she heard him whisper to himself; "she would rather die!..."

Peggy had followed him, and she stood at the end of the sofa, aghast at what she had done. She began to speak slowly and nervously.

"Colling, don't do that. I really can't bear that you should think me unkind. I like you too well to let you do anything that would spoil our happiness. I am not unkind—really I am not. Have not I shown how fond of you I am? We have been such good friends!"

"Friends!" he said bitterly, without looking up from his hands.

His voice was so cold, so charged with misery and sudden realisation, that it cut the girl to the heart. She went round from the back of the sofa and knelt at his feet, stretching out her hand timidly, and touching the sleeve of his coat.

"Colling, dear, what else can we be?" she said.

He looked down at her, and for a moment his voice did not soften. There was a quiet, dogged misery in it.

"We have passed the merely friendship line," he said; "and you know that well enough, Peggy. That has been passed a long time. You would not have left London with me if we had only been friends and nothing more. Were we only friends when we used to sit up together night after night at Ellerdine's house? Do 'friends' speak to each other as we have spoken? Why, you have only to touch my hand to know that I burn with longing."

"Colling, you mustn't say such things!"

He jumped up roughly, leaving her kneeling upon the floor, and passed with rapid steps to the window.

"Friends!" he cried, and his voice had a razor edge to it. "Friends! It's not true! Do friends run the risks that we have run? For God's sake, here and now let us be honest with each other. Why, we haven't even tried to fool society! For Heaven's sake, Peggy, don't let's try to fool ourselves!"

Peggy rose slowly to her feet, trembling all over. "Colling! oh, Colling!" she said in a piteous voice, "surely people don't think we are——"

"People don't think! People are only too glad to think. You know well enough what is said about others——"

Her face grew paler still, her eyes were wide with fear and slowly dawning realisation. She clasped both hands to her breast, and the light shone upon the rubies set in the old Moorish bracelets that she was wearing.

"Oh!" she said.

He came up to her again.

"Peggy, you don't care, do you?"

"Don't care, Colling!" she gasped. "Tell me, do people think we are——"

"Think!—how can they help thinking it? Haven't we given them every reason?"

"No, no, no! Oh! I hate to think of that! We have only been very fond friends. Why should they think otherwise?"

There were tears of agony in her voice. She kept clasping and unclasping her hands.

"Oh! I suppose it is all my fault," she said brokenly—"all my fault. I don't think ungenerous things of others. I have been too trusting—too confiding. Why should people thing such things? I only wanted a good friend, a companion."

He still stood by her, looking at her keenly, and the bitterness in his voice did not die away. "Friends! Oh yes, I know! You wanted someone to pet you, to pamper you. What you wanted was someone to satisfy all your vanities—your yearning for devotion, for adulation, for sense of power. I know! You wanted all the joys and none of the risks. That sums up the whole thing in a nutshell. There are lots of women like you. They drive men mad—make drunkards, gamblers, swindlers of them. I have seen it often enough. I have seen men fall out and lose themselves among the army of crooks that throng the second-rate shows. But I won't let you drive me mad."

The bitterness in his voice was terrible. His words seemed to scourge her, to lash her like a whip. She stared at him in helpless amazement and misery. He had paused in his rapid torrent of speech, and as he saw her distress he seemed to be a little touched.

"Peggy!" he said, and once more the note of passion came into his voice, while the anger died out of it—"Peggy! I mean you to be mine. There will be a crash soon—that is certain. Admaston will take notice of what everybody is saying about us. He will come out of his political shell, wake up, do things, put an end to it at once and for ever!"

"Oh, my God! What have I done!" the girl cried.

"Done! What have you done to deserve your husband's neglect? Why, he doesn't even know that you exist. His heart beats by Act of Parliament. He'd a thousand times rather address a village meeting than spend an hour in your company. Are you to pass your youth in the company of——"

"Stop! stop!" she cried. "Say what you like about me—scold me if you like, but say nothing against him. You do not know my husband. We are neither of us fit to mention his name. He is a big man, and he loves me."

"But, Peggy, you won't say that you love him?" Collingwood said, with a curious note of perplexity in his voice. The situation, tragic as it was, got a little bit beyond him.

"Love him?" she answered. "I don't know. I have had no chance to love anyone the way you regard love."

Collingwood put his hands into his pockets, swung round upon his heels and swung back again. "I see," he said; "you mean you don't love Admaston, and won't love anybody else?"

"Oh, I don't know," Peggy replied; "but I certainly don't love anybody else. You think I am neglected. That is absurd. It was my father's wish that we should marry. George knew that I did not love him. He trusts me fully. There will be no crash."

He heard the note in her voice which told him that she was trying to persuade herself that her fears were groundless, and smiled rather grimly.

"There will be," he said. "You take my word for it. No man—not even Admaston—can stand ridicule for long. Remember, I mean to win you. I shall marry no one if I don't marry you."

She tried to speak lightly.

"Colling, don't be so silly! You are one of the best matches in England. You will marry a beautiful girl who will lead society and make you a very proud and ambitious man. Don't shake your head—that's only because you want to be gallant. Heavens! how I would do things if I were a man! You, with all your talents and your money, ought to rise to any position."

"You are mad about position," he said impatiently.

"Yes," Peggy answered. "I like men who have some big purpose in life and who fight the world and win."

"Like George Admaston!" Collingwood answered, and now for the first time there came a glint of malicious and real ill-humour over his face. It came and passed in a second, but it had been there.

"Yes," Peggy replied; "like George Admaston! He is a fighter, Colling. I think many women would love George. He is not the butterfly type—but——"

"But he has all the luck," Collingwood broke in fiercely. "I could do anything if you were with me. I must have something—or someone—to fight for. My nature must be baffled. There must be obstacles in the way for me. I have a wicked streak in me somewhere that turns red when I can't get what I want. Peggy, you must let Admaston get a divorce."

The words seemed to strike her dumb. All colour had left her face long since, but now almost all expression went from it also for a moment. It was as if she had been struck some paralysing blow.

He was watching her keenly, and as he noted the effect of his words a spasm of pain went through him, though he showed nothing of it in his face or manner. He loved her, he loved her dearly; there was no doubt about that. He hated to give her pain, yet he felt he was being cruel only to be kind. She must face the situation once and for all, and then perhaps everything might be right. The situation, serious as it was, was very largely of his own creation. Seeing no other way, he had deliberately endeavoured to compromise Mrs. Admaston. All his plans, all his ideas, had been directed to this end. He wanted to force her husband's hand and to marry Peggy after the divorce. He loved her wildly, madly, passionately. He would have been a perfect husband to her—there can be no doubt of that.

But his love was selfish. In order to win this woman for his own he was ready to subject her to all the indignities and all the shame of a process in the courts. In his overmastering desire, her reputation, her honour, mattered nothing to him. It was she that he wanted, and any means should be taken to achieve that end.

Men like Roderick Collingwood have few guiding principles in life, save only those of their own appetites. Of course, the public school and the university have given them a certain code. They must pay their gambling debts, they must do various other things of that sort; but as far as any conception of the morality and decency, which have made England what it is, is concerned, they are absolutely without it.

He nodded at Peggy, driving home the words.

"Divorce! Oh, you mustn't talk like that. You know how it hurts me," she said at last, when she had recovered a little. "Really, really, you are mistaken. I am quite satisfied with my life—only, sometimes when I am foolish I feel just a bit lonely and neglected."

He turned on her almost with a sneer. He was bitterly hurt and angry, and there is no doubt that, from his point of view, he had reason for complaint. She had led him on. She had flirted outrageously with him. She had deliberately done her best to be provocative. Her intentions, doubtless, were innocent enough as far as any dishonour to her husband entered into the question. But her love of adulation, her vanity, her desire of power, were all gratified by her conquest of him; while at the same time she still had a real and genuine friendship for a man who, with all his faults, was essentially charming, good-natured, and kind.

"Then you have deceived me!" he cried.

"Colling, don't say that. I never meant——"

"Never meant? Good heavens! I told you six months ago that I loved you, and ever since then you have let me go here and there with you, and I have told you of my love again and again."

"But you have always been so good. You have never been unkind to me before to-night."

"Good God! Unkind! Why, most men would have divorced their wives on far less evidence than we have furnished. And all the while you have accepted the position without a murmur. You don't know what you have done."

"Colling, what do you mean?"

"Mean?" he answered. "I mean that you have led me to believe that you didn't care what we did—what people said about us. Mean? I mean that the call of love is in the spring, Peggy, whispering to you and me. Mean? I mean that I am a man and you are a woman—our souls stand bare to one another—that I love you and that you love me."

He sprang at her and caught her up in his arms once more.

"I don't love you, Colling! Let me go!" she cried.

"I can't let you go! It is my hour! It is your fault as well as mine! Kiss me, Peggy! You have tortured me long enough! Kiss me!"

He held her tight, tight! His face blazed. There was a fury in his voice.

At that very moment when he stopped speaking and was gazing down at her, while she lay for a moment almost passive in his arms after her first fight and struggle, a loud, sharp, clear sound rang out in the room. It was the bell of the telephone upon the wall.

"Ellerdine!" Peggy said.

"Let him ring," Collingwood answered.

They stood there for another moment clasped together, and once more the insistent summons of the bell came.

"No, no," Peggy cried; "answer him, please!"

With an odd, instinctive gesture Collingwood put his arm right round her. Before he had been straining her to him passionately. Now there was something protective in his attitude.

And again the bell whirred.

At last with great reluctance Collingwood stepped up to the wall and caught up the receiver.

"Well, well!" he said. "Who is it? What! Ad——Admaston!"

A voice which was robbed of all ordinary qualities shivered out into the room.

"My husband!" said Peggy.

Collingwood made a warning gesture with his left hand, telling her to keep quiet.

"Yes," he said; "we took the wrong train. Yes, Collingwood. Yes, it is he speaking."

"Where is he?" came hissing to the ears of the man at the telephone. Again he motioned her to silence, giving a slight impatient tap with his foot upon the carpet.

"Oh yes. We have just finished supper. What? I can't hear you distinctly. You want to speak to Ellerdine? Hold the line a moment; I'll call him."

He put down the receiver upon the table and ran up to Peggy, who was shaking like a leaf in the wind.

"He wants to speak to you, too, I think," Collingwood said in a low, fierce whisper; "but perhaps you had better not."

"I can't," Peggy answered, swaying this way and that as if about to fall. He put out his arm and steadied her.

"All right, darling," he said; "it is all right!"

"Where is he? London?" she said.

"I didn't ask," he replied. "Wait a minute!"

He hurried to the telephone again. "Hello! Ellerdine has just gone out. Hello! Where are you speaking from? Damn! We're cut off. Hello! Hello!"

He listened for nearly half a minute, taut and strained as a greyhound on the leash; then he flung the receiver angrily upon the bracket.

"We're cut off," he repeated, looking at her almost stupidly, as if the situation was beyond him.

Collingwood said nothing for a little time. At last he spoke. "I didn't think of that," he said. "Can he have had us——"

"What? What?" she almost shrieked.

"Followed?"

He plunged his hands into the pockets of his dinner-jacket and bent his head, thinking deeply. Then he looked up at Peggy. "Peggy," he said at length, "rumour—he has been ridiculed into action—the crash has come."

The girl held out both hands towards him as if warding off a blow. "Go, go!" she cried; "please go! I sha'n't speak another word to you to-night. Go at once!"

"I can't leave you now, Peggy. I just worship you."

"I shall ring for my maid," she said, and moved towards the bell-push.

"No, don't do that. Don't be cruel, Peggy!" he said, in a voice instinct with agonised pleading. "Don't be cruel, Peggy! No, no! Don't ring!"

"I shall," she said firmly, and stretched out her hand.

"Peggy, trust me. I love you better than anything in the world—better than myself. For you I will sacrifice wealth, honour."

"Honour!" she cried.

"I'll do anything to win you. Everything I have done has been to win you—to have you for my own. You know it is true. Peggy, before God, I believed that you loved me too. Don't judge me harshly—oh, don't do that!"

Peggy put out her hand and pressed the bell-push.

"I must be alone," she said in a dull, muffled voice.

He saw that it was useless, that he had failed, that the plans of months had all miscarried, that everything was over for him as far as she was concerned. Undisciplined as his nature was, baffled and disowned as he felt, he nevertheless showed himself rather fine in that moment. He made an almost superhuman effort at self-control—and succeeded.

"All right, Peggy dear," he said. "Don't be afraid. Everything will come right. Good night." With one last lingering look at her he left the room, closing the door which led into his own.

Peggy sank down upon the sofa almost over-mastered by her rising hysteria, limp and half unconscious.

She lay there breathing hurriedly, and with her eyes closed, when the corridor door opened and Pauline came rapidly into the room.

"Madame!" she cried.

Peggy gave one great sob of relief.

"Pauline!—you have not gone to bed?"

"No, madame! I was so anxious about you I could not sleep."

"Oh, my head is bursting!" the girl cried; "there is a pain like the thrust of a sword in my head."

"Poor darling!" Pauline said, her voice guttural with excitement, her trembling hands passing over the young girl's form with loving, frightened caresses. "Poor darling! There is something altogether wrong. Just now, when I came down, I saw a man standing at your door listening."

"At that door?"

"Yes. Twice I have seen him to-day. He was at Boulogne; I saw him looking at your boxes. Then just after supper he came in—when I was speaking to the waiter."

"Then we have been followed," Peggy answered, breaking down utterly. "Pauline, I feel that something dreadful is going to happen. Stay with me—don't go back to your room. Soothe me, Pauline, as you used to when I was little and afraid of the dark."

---

CHAPTER IV

It was about nine o'clock the next morning. The heat of the night before had given place to that incomparable freshness which spring mornings have in Paris.

The windows of Mrs. Admaston's sitting-room were open, and a delightfully scented air, from the lilac blossoms and all the flowers of the gardens in the Tuileries, flooded and floated into the room.

Rooms have an aspect of this or that emotion according to the hour in which the events of the soul have taken place within them.

There are some rooms which always have the same mood. When one goes into them one doesn't impose one's mood, one's fancy, or one's ideas upon the place, but is dominated by one lasting personality—of furniture, of aspect, of general mise en scène.

It would be impossible, for example, to have a merry breakfast-party in the hangman's ante-room to the gallows; and one has known rooms in hotels which one enters gladly, unconscious of the pervading gloom which seems to cling to floor and ceiling and rises up like a spectre into the heart and brain after a few minutes' sojourn there.

The sitting-room in the Hôtel des Tuileries, which had been the theatre of such tragic emotions on the last spring midnight, was now ordinary and comfortable enough.

The chairs and settees were all in their proper places. The carpet had been brushed, and its dull blues, greys, and brick-dust reds were all essentially artistic.

And they had brought new flowers there also. The bowls and vases were filled with fresh purple and white lilac. The silver candlesticks had been polished—there were no drippings of wax upon them any more. Tall white candles, fresh, virginal, and unfired, filled all the candlesticks.

In the middle of all this freshness two people were—a man and a woman.

One, Lord Ellerdine, was very tall and lean. He was dressed in a suit of very immaculate grey flannel—not the greyish-green which the ordinary person who wears flannels imagines to be the right thing, but the real grey-grey which costs a good deal of money; if the tailors in Sackville Street and Waterloo Place, from whom we suffer, are to be believed.

Lord Ellerdine's hair—and he hadn't much of it—was what he himself would have described as "the same old dust-colour." He wore a stiff double collar with blue lines upon it, a tie of China silk, and a big black pearl, stuck right down at the bottom, so that it only peeped out from the opening of his waistcoat now and again.

Lord Ellerdine had red eyes—that is to say, that there was a sort of red glint in them. The brows which overhung them were straight and dark, and contradicted with an odd grotesquerie the flickering attempt to really be at home and happy with the world. The face itself was rather tanned and brown, lean in contour and suggesting the explorer and the travelled man; and all this was oddly contradicted by an engaging little button of a mouth, which twitched and lisped and was always rather more jolly than the occasion warranted.

By the side of Lord Ellerdine—or rather standing in the middle of the room and looking down upon him, for he had thrown himself upon the sofa—was a tall, slim, and gracious woman, perfectly dressed in a travelling coat and skirt of tweed. She looked round her rather fretfully.

Her face was radiant—there is no other word for it. Although she had been travelling all night, she appeared to be as fresh as paint—and that exactly describes her.

The complexion was perfect. It had that creamy morbidezza one sees in a furled magnolia bud. Two straight, decisive lips seemed like a "band of scarlet upon a tower of ivory." Lady Attwill's eyes were sapphire-blue and suspicious, but entirely charming. She was, in short, a thoroughly handsome woman, and the sunlight struck curious radiances from the little pearls she wore in the shell-like lobes of her ears.

"Tell madame, will you, Pauline?" she said.

"I'll tell madame that you have arrived," the maid said with a little bow. She crossed the room, knocked, opened the door leading into Mrs. Admaston's bedroom, and disappeared.

Almost immediately Lady Attwill's face changed from its quiet calm and became vivid.

"Cheer up, Dicky!" she said to Lord Ellerdine; "you've been in many a worse fix than this."

The diplomatist looked at her for a moment, his whole silly—but somehow distinguished—face covered with a sort of desperate cheerfulness.

"Worse!" he said. "I should say so. I don't mind gettin' into a 'fix,' as you call it."

"Then what in the world are you grumbling about?" Lady Attwill asked.

"Why, how am I going to get out of it? Any fool can get into a fix—any time. It's gettin' out—what? That's the bally riddle, Alice—gettin' out of it. What?"

Lady Attwill went up to him and dug him confidentially in the shoulder with one pretty gloved thumb.

"Look here, Dicky," she said; "now, did I ever fail you?"

"Oh no, no. You've always been pretty good."

"Now, haven't I got you out of many a scrape?"

Lord Ellerdine seemed to think—that is to say, call upon the resources of a somewhat attenuated memory. "Yes," he replied; "not so confounded many—only two; and—yes—well, of course, that other one was rather awkward."

He chuckled to himself. "But, after all, this is different," he continued. "I am not in this one, exactly. No more are you. It's Peggy's fix. And we don't quite know how she's got into it. I don't like the look of it."

Lady Attwill listened to him with an aspect of particular attention. But if the man had been able to realise it he would have seen the flash of contempt which came and went over her face. He did not, however, and she replied in her ordinary tones:

"Look of it! It's merely a frolic—nothing serious. Collingwood is not the man to run risks. He believes in the simple life."

"Does he, by Jove!" Lord Ellerdine said. "He's not so simple as that, Alice."

"He is not so simple as to get into a complication with Admaston," she answered. "He's no fool—you take my word for it."

Lord Ellerdine grinned his fatuous little grin.

"Seems I have to take your word for everything," he said.

"All right, Dicky," she answered; "just you leave all the thinking to me."

"You don't give me time to think," he answered. "I know I am deuced slow at it. But tell me this. How did Peggy and Collingwood get to my place last autumn before ten o'clock in the morning? Tell me that—what?"

"They motored through the night, of course."

"They jolly well didn't," replied his lordship.

"But Colling told us he did," said Lady Attwill.

"I knew he did. But they didn't."

Lady Attwill had been glancing over the Matin of that day, which had been laid upon the breakfast table. At these words of her companion's she put down the paper rather hurriedly and looked up.

"Dicky," she said, "I believe you know something."

"I know I do."

"What is it, then?"

"Bad breakdown at Selby overnight. They came on to my place in a hired motor next morning. I heard all about it from the man who drove them down from Selby."

Lady Attwill was very genuinely interested, or achieved a fair assumption of interest. "Dicky!" she cried.

Lord Ellerdine nodded his thin head vigorously. "It's a fact," he replied triumphantly. "The fellow is now my second chauffeur. So you see I can find out things if I have time enough. Alice, I don't like this fix Peggy's in. Staying at Selby with Collingwood all night was bad enough, but——"

"Good gracious!" Lady Attwill answered, "can't a woman stay at the same hotel with a man she knows without scandal?"

"Scandal!" Lord Ellerdine replied. "Damn the scandal! It's what folks think. It's who you are. Lots of women wouldn't mind staying at the same hotel I was staying at, and nobody would dream that there was anything wrong—you wouldn't, Alice. But Peggy and Collingwood make people suspect them."

Lady Attwill went up to Lord Ellerdine and pinched his arm playfully. "You silly old Dicky," she said, "you've been listening to a lot of stupid twaddle at your clubs."

"Well," he answered, "they know pretty well what's going on."

"Yes, I suppose they do," she said. "Talk about women and their gossip! Why, Dicky, they're not in it with your smoke-room gang."

At that moment Pauline entered from Mrs. Admaston's bedroom. There was a hardly veiled hostility in her face as she spoke, though her manner was civil enough. "Madame will see Lady Attwill," she said.

Lady Attwill swept across the room, flashing a somewhat curious glance at the old maidservant as she passed her, and entered the bedroom.

Lord Ellerdine had strolled up to the fireplace. "Tell Peggy I am waiting," he called out.

"All right," Lady Attwill said. "You amuse yourself for a few minutes."

Lord Ellerdine began to hum a little tune; then he noticed Pauline, who was arranging some violets upon a side table. "Morning, Pauline," he said. "How's madame?"

"She has a headache," the maid replied; "just a little nervous. Is your lordship well?"

"No, I am not well, Pauline, I am sorry to say. I feel very groggy. I have been all night in a confounded slow train."

Pauline said nothing, but left the room just as the third door opened and Collingwood came briskly into the room.

He was wearing a lounge suit of dark blue. The air of poise and easy carriage which was so marked a part of his personality was very much in evidence now. There was a quiet spring in his step, a brisk and cheery purpose in his movements, and he seemed singularly alert and débonnaire; perfectly dressed, a very proper man to look at, but somehow or other without a suggestion of foppishness, which Lord Ellerdine always managed to convey. His face was calm and composed, but a close observer would have noticed that there were dark rings under the eyes and that the face was slightly paler than its wont.

"Oh, there you are!" Lord Ellerdine said.

"Hello, Ellerdine!" Collingwood replied. "Bright and early as usual?"

"Early, yes," said the other; "but not so deuced bright, old chap."

"When did you get here?"

"About five o'clock."

"Had breakfast?"

"No," said Lord Ellerdine. "I had a bath, a shave, a change, and a brandy-and-soda."

Collingwood went up to the window and sat looking idly down into the Rue de Rivoli.

"Refreshing, but not very filling," he said. "Staying here?"

"No," Lord Ellerdine replied; "they would not let us in. It's race-week, you know. They are packed out. The place is full of big bookies and racing fellows. We had to go to the St. Denis. A nice fix you've got us all in, Collingwood!"

Collingwood turned away from the window.

"Fix? I've got you in? How do you mean?"

Lord Ellerdine struggled to find words in which to express his meaning.

"I'm blowed if I know—quite. Anyway, we're in it."

"I don't understand," Collingwood answered.

"Oh, come on!" replied Lord Ellerdine. "Chuck that business, Colling! I know your beastly way of putting a fellow off, but you can't leave me out of this."

Collingwood lit a cigarette very deliberately. "Leave you out?" he said.

"Wish to heavens you could!" was the rejoinder.

Collingwood perched himself on the end of the sofa, swinging his legs. "Look here, what's up?"

"Are we at St. Moritz?" Lord Ellerdine asked.

"No," Collingwood answered coolly.

"Are we in Switzerland?"

"No."

"Well, where are we?"

"I make a good guess," Collingwood said, "that we are in Paris."

Lord Ellerdine flushed up and began to get angry.

"Well, there you are!" he said. "Damn it, there you are! And you have got the sublime cheek to ask me what's up."

Collingwood smiled. "Now, don't get ratty, Dicky," he said. "It's all right. Only a trifling contretemps. We got on the wrong train—by mistake."

Lord Ellerdine began to stroll up and down the room. He tried to be judicial in his manner. "Now, are you telling me that for a fact or for a joke?" he asked.

"Fact—absolute fact. We were kept until the last moment paying duty on Peggy's cigarettes, and had to rush for the train——"

He had been going to say something further, but Lord Ellerdine interrupted him. "I saw you," he said.

Here Collingwood cut in suddenly: "Yes, getting into the train that was on the move."

"Yes," Lord Ellerdine said, "the Paris express. You jumped Peggy on and sprang after her, dragging her maid with you. A clever bit of work, my friend."

Collingwood shrugged his shoulders. "Well, where were you?" he replied.

"In the other train—the right one. With Alice. It was a rotten thing for you to do."

"What, leave you with Alice?"

Lord Ellerdine shook his head impatiently. "No, no," he said irritably; "to leave us in the lurch like that."

"But I telegraphed to you to Chalons that we had got on the wrong train."

"Yes, you wired to Chalons right enough, but that didn't make it true. I would not have gone if Alice had not persuaded me that the train was running in two parts, and that you would be sure to join us at Chalons."

"Well, it's all right now," Collingwood replied, still preserving the perfect sang-froid with which he had listened to all the other's remarks. "It's all right now, so don't let's say any more about it."

"All right now, by Jove!" Ellerdine replied. "Is it? Suppose Admaston hears about it—what?"

"Of course," Collingwood said, "if you think it is absolutely necessary, we'll invent some yarn that will satisfy him."

"I do think it necessary. But you'll have to do it. I never could invent—never. No good at it. Confound you, Colling, leaving us...."

Collingwood's manner changed from coolness to something more intimate. "Now, look here, Dicky," he said persuasively. "I didn't think you'd cut up rough about it. I thought Alice possibly might, but not you."

"Oh, she doesn't mind," Ellerdine answered. "She never believes that people get on the wrong train, or have motor accidents so that they can have a night off."

Collingwood put his feet down to the floor and threw the end of his cigarette into the fireplace. "Now, look here," he said; "do you mean that you think that I——" He hesitated for a moment.

"No, I don't," Lord Ellerdine answered; "but what will Admaston think? He is sure to hear of it. I'll bet you a fiver it's known in London to-night. There is always someone on the spot to notice things that go wrong, and this is so suspicious—so damned suspicious, mind you. Why, I don't like the look of it—mind, the look of it—myself."

"Then we must set your conscience at rest, that's all," Collingwood replied.

"How?"

"Well, we must all have a proper, coherent, connected yarn to tell. That's quite simple."

Ellerdine shook his head thoughtfully. "I don't think it will work," he said. "You can't get four people to tell the same yarn without variation. There's sure to be one let it down just where it ought to be kept up."

"If it were a long, complicated yarn, perhaps," said Collingwood; "but I don't mean that at all. Just a plain, unvarnished tale."

"Unvarnished!" the peer replied. "Well, it'll take a deuce of a lot of paint to make this one look all right."

"Not a bit of it," Collingwood replied. "Easy as anything."

Lord Ellerdine went to the fireplace once more and stood with his back to the flames. "Right ho," he said; "go ahead."

"Here you are, then," Collingwood began. "We all got on the wrong train."

"But we didn't."

"Damn it!" Collingwood said, "of course we didn't; but we'll say we did."

Lord Ellerdine began to check the points upon the fingers of one hand, as if anxious to commit them to memory even at this early stage. "Am I to say we did?" he asked.

"We will all say we did," Collingwood replied.

"I shall never be able to," Lord Ellerdine remarked hopelessly.

"Confound it, Dicky! Are you the George Washington of the lot?"

The peer shook his head more vigorously. That imputation, at anyrate, he was anxious to avoid. "No, no," he said quickly; "it's not the truth that bothers me. It's getting the blooming fib to sound all right."

Collingwood repeated his instruction as if he were teaching a lesson to a child, speaking slowly and impressively. "'We all got on the wrong train.' There's nothing difficult about saying that."

Lord Ellerdine repeated the sentence in exactly the same voice.

"'We all got on the wrong train.'"

"Bravo, Dicky!" said Collingwood. "Now then, don't relax your attention, old chap. The next is that we all stayed the night at this hotel."

The index finger of Lord Ellerdine's right hand moved from the thumb to the first finger of his left. He appeared to have got it all right, when suddenly a doubt seemed to enter the vacant spaces of his mind.

"What, here?" he asked.

"Yes, here; at this hotel."

"Oh! Come, old chap! Doesn't that look like a bally lie? Now think it over for yourself. Listen. 'We all stayed the night at this hotel.'"

Collingwood was a patient man, and he listened without any betrayal of what he really felt in dealing with this pleasant fool.

"Well," he said, "what's wrong with it?"

"Oh! it lacks something," was the reply; and though the speaker did not amplify his statement, his voice was full of doubt and hesitation.

"Oh, rot!" Collingwood answered. "It's only wrong because we didn't stay here. If you can say, 'We all got on the wrong train,' surely to goodness you can say that we all stayed the night at this hotel?"

"Yes," Ellerdine answered slowly. "I suppose it ought to be easy enough."

"No wonder you chucked diplomacy," Collingwood said.

"Oh! I didn't mind a fib or two for international reasons."

"I see," Collingwood rejoined. "Your conscience begins to prick you only when fibs are told for domestic purposes."

"Well, you see, you run much greater risks of being found out. It's awful to be found out in an ordinary lie—people make such a fuss of other people's lies."

"Do you mean to tell me that national lies are never found out?"

"Well, you see," Ellerdine replied—the discussion was getting a little bit beyond him, and again he struggled to find words,—"you see, national lies are not about persons." Then he shook his head. "I'm damned bad at it, Collingwood," he said in a final sort of voice. "I can't rely on my memory. I suppose there's no other way out of it?"

"My dear chap, none whatever," Collingwood said.

"'We all got on the wrong train,'" Ellerdine repeated to himself slowly in a sing-song voice; and then, looking up brightly, "Does seem easy, doesn't it?"

"Top hole," said Collingwood.

Thus encouraged, Lord Ellerdine began to repeat the second half of his lesson. "'We all stayed the night at this hotel.' There's something wrong with that."

"It's only your sense of the scrupulous," Collingwood replied. "Only say it often enough. Say it thirty or forty times; then it will sound all right."

At this moment the door opened and Lady Attwill came in. She looked quickly at Collingwood and he at her.

"Good morning," he said. "Well, how is Peggy?"

"She has a bad headache," Lady Attwill replied. "She's coming in in a minute or two. I have had a warm quarter of an hour, I can tell you, though I am sure I don't know what I have done...."

If the woman was acting she was acting supremely, for there seemed genuine disgust in her voice.

"Is she much cut up?" Lord Ellerdine asked.

"I should think she is! She's dreadfully cut up! I don't know what we are to do," Lady Attwill said.

Lord Ellerdine suddenly became important; his little mouth smiled brightly. He was the bearer of good news. "Oh, that's all settled," he said, rubbing his hands briskly together. "I and Collingwood have arranged it all."

"Arranged what?" Lady Attwill asked.

"Well, do you see, we all——"

The bright expression faded from the ex-diplomatist's face. "Tell her, Collingwood," he said. "My head won't work. I've forgotten everything already."

"You've never given Dicky anything to think about?" Lady Attwill said in mock alarm.

"Not much," Collingwood answered.

Ellerdine flushed up angrily. "Not much!" he cried. "He gets on the wrong train. He leaves us standing at the post like a couple of sublime martyrs. Goes off to Paris and leaves us kicking our confounded heels at Chalons. We come here after them—find the hotel full of bookies—travel all night in a beastly slow train—no sleep, no food, no Switzerland. Not much to think about! I shall have an attack of brain fever after this affair."

Lady Attwill went up to the enraged gentleman. "Poor Dicky!" she said soothingly. "He's had a bad night. Dicky is no good unless he gets his proper sleep. Now sit down, there's a good boy, and let's talk it over properly."

She led him to a chair with a radiant smile, and then turned to Collingwood. "Now tell me, what is it that you have arranged?" As she said this she felt in the side pocket of his coat and drew out his cigarette case. Opening it, she gave him one and took one for herself, struck a match and lit it.

"Well," Collingwood answered, leaning over the back of the sofa on which his friend had seated herself. "A short, straight tale—simple, to the point, and easy to tell."

"The truth?" Lady Attwill asked.

"The truth! Never! Who's going to tell Admaston the truth?" Lord Ellerdine burst out.

"How's he to know?" Lady Attwill said.

"Know!" Ellerdine retorted. "I'll bet Collingwood a fiver all London knows to-night."

He looked anxiously at the other man, unable to understand how he could take things so easily, absolutely unconscious of anything underlying this unfortunate occurrence, absolutely unsuspicious of the sinister forces at work around him.

"Oh, bosh!" Collingwood answered. "Anyway, we can say we all got on the wrong train."

"'That we all got on the wrong train,'" came with parrot-like precision from the diplomatist.

"But we didn't," Lady Attwill said, looking from one to the other.

Lord Ellerdine jumped up from his chair, his face radiant with triumph. "There you are!" he said to Collingwood. "Just what I told you!"

Lady Attwill became alive to the situation. "Oh, I see," she said; "that is the short, straight, simple tale. I see. 'We all got on the wrong train.'"

"You see, Dicky!" Collingwood said with a smile. "See how quickly Alice picks it up."

"Oh, she's used to it," said Ellerdine. "She picks up things very quickly. But tell her the sequel—that's the water-jump for me."

"Come on; let's have a look at it," said Lady Attwill.

Collingwood seemed vastly amused. He assumed the air of a comedian. His hands fluttered before him in pantomime. His handsome face became droll and merry.

"'We all stayed the night at this hotel,'" he said.

Lord Ellerdine nodded with an anxious look in his eyes towards Lady Attwill. "Now try that," he said.

"'We all stayed the night at this hotel,'" said Lady Attwill with perfect naturalness and ease.

"There you are!" said Collingwood.

The middle-aged fool in the arm-chair was quite interested and pleased. He saw nothing of the grimness which underlay this gay, light-hearted chatter, in this gay and brilliant room. The other two, man and woman, were playing their parts most skilfully—not so much to deceive Ellerdine, but to trick themselves into the belief that they were not engaged in a very dirty, ugly business.

It's an extraordinary thing, but nevertheless perfectly true, that people who are able to infuse a sinister and tragic moment with mocking gaiety certainly provide for themselves an anodyne to the pain and fear it would otherwise bring them.

No doubt that is why the devil is generally represented as smirking or leering.

The door opened and the Scotch-French waiter with a large tray entered, followed by another also carrying a tray, but whose swarthy features and thick purple lips proclaimed him no hybrid, but a true son of the Côte d'Azur.

Lord Ellerdine jumped up. "Food!" he said. "I am starving."

Lady Attwill rose also. "Poor Dicky must always have his food," she said. "I always think he never seems quite human till he has had his breakfast. When we were down at his place together——"

Collingwood nudged her with a warning look. "Piano!" he said.

"What about?" she whispered, with a rather sardonic grin. "I don't want to play."

"The waiter, I mean," Collingwood replied.

"Bien!" she answered, seating herself in front of the cafetière and pouring out the hot brown coffee.

Lord Ellerdine had also sat down. He looked at his as yet empty plate and drummed with his fingers upon the table-cloth. "'We all stayed the night at this hotel,'" he said in a perfectly audible voice.

"Oui, monsieur," said Jacques of Ecclefechan suddenly.

Ellerdine started and looked up, his face expressing great surprise. "Get away," he said. "I wasn't speaking to you."

Collingwood frowned. His nerves, now, didn't seem quite under the same control as they had been before. "Laissez les autres choses, garçon. Nous nous servirons."

"Bien, monsieur," said the waiter, with an ugly and furtive smile upon his face, which nobody noticed, as he left the room.

"Come on, Alice. Where's my coffee?" said Lord Ellerdine.

"There you are," she answered. "Coffee, Colling?"

Collingwood nodded. "What is there?" he asked.

Lady Attwill lifted the covers. "Omelette, bacon, sole, mushrooms."

"Sole for me."

"Bacon and mushrooms, Alice," Ellerdine remarked, quite himself again at the thought of breakfast.

"You have no idea how I buck up after a cup of coffee," he continued; "but, upon my soul, I feel like a fried flounder this morning. I don't think I shall ever be in a hotter place than that confounded train from Chalons."

"Yes, you will, Dicky," Lady Attwill remarked, taking a piece of toast from the rack.

"Oh yes, you will, Dicky," Collingwood echoed; "don't make any mistake about that."

"After all," Lady Attwill went on, "it wasn't so bad. You worried; that was what made you hot."

"You don't know anything about it. You slept like a log all the way," Ellerdine said.

"Easy conscience," answered the lady, beginning her breakfast with great satisfaction.

"You didn't get on the wrong train," said Ellerdine meaningly.

Collingwood put down his fish-fork. The long strain to which his nerves had been subjected, the irritation which he had so well suppressed until now, had its way with him and burst out.

"Oh, damn it!" he said, "you two make me tired. Do shut up about the wrong train. Let's have our breakfast in peace."

Lord Ellerdine busied himself with his mushrooms. "I wish I had a hide as thick as yours, Colling, old man," he said. "You do take things smoothly. Look at him, Alice—eating away as if he was on his honeymoon!"

Collingwood glared at his vis-à-vis. "Honeymoon!" he said.

"He doesn't care a fig about getting us into this mess. What excellent bacon they have here!" Lord Ellerdine went on.

Again Collingwood got the better of his rising temper. "Oh, you'll be all right, Dicky," he said, "when we get to St. Moritz to-morrow."

"We're not going," Lady Attwill said shortly.

Collingwood started. "We are," he said.

"Wrong, my boy," said Lady Attwill again. "Peggy is going back."

"Back! Back where?"

"To London."

"She doesn't mean it?" Collingwood said, putting down his fork and looking straight at Lady Attwill.

She nodded at him, and he knew that what she said was true.

"There you are!" piped out in Lord Ellerdine's voice. "I knew it; I felt it in my bones all the time I was in that beastly train. Peggy's got the hump. You have spoilt the whole show, Colling. I can't eat any more."

He pushed his chair away from the table with a perplexed and angry face, and began to walk up and down the room.

"Hang it!" Collingwood said, "is this the first time that anyone got on the wrong train?"

"No, it is not," Ellerdine answered shortly. "But it is the first time it has happened to Peggy. Anybody but Peggy."

"It seems to me," Collingwood said, "that we are making a lot of unnecessary fuss."

"Yes; let's drop it," came from Lady Attwill.

"Alice," Lord Ellerdine persisted, "don't you agree with me?"

She sighed, but it was necessary to preserve appearances. "Well, Dicky," she said, "Peggy has not shown a tenacious desire to observe the strict letter of every propriety. I know that there has been nothing wrong. Absolutely nothing but little frisks and frolics now and then—quite all right actually—looking perhaps worse than they were—nothing else. But, after all, it is not what you do; the trouble of it is what other folks say you do."

The persistent moralist was not to be put off. "The married woman," he said, in a voice as near to a pulpit manner as he could get, "cannot afford to have anyone say a word. Look at Alice. Before Attwill kicked the bucket she lived in a glass case. Didn't you, Alice?"

Collingwood chuckled: not merrily at all, but with a rather nasty cynicism—a snigger, in fact.

"Look here, Dicky," he said, "if you don't stop your sickening habit of preaching left-handed morality at me I'll give you up. I can't stand it. I am not moral—don't know the first thing about it—never met anybody who did. Man is not moral; environment makes it impossible. You're not moral, Dicky, although you may think you are. And as for society, it is absolutely unmoral."

"I say! I say! I say! Listen to our future Home Secretary!" said Lord Ellerdine.

"No fear," Collingwood answered. "I leave that field to Admaston and the other cackling crew of humbugs."

Lady Attwill laughed amusedly, and Ellerdine was about to say something else, when the door opened and Peggy entered.

She was very simply but very expensively dressed in an exquisite walking-dress of a colour which was neither grey nor amethyst, but a cunning blend of both. At her breast she wore a little sprig of white lilac. There was a sudden silence as she entered, a silence almost as if the three people were conspirators.

Peggy walked briskly up to the table, nodding and smiling. "Well, you're a nice lot," she said. "Why didn't you tell me breakfast was ready? I have been dying for a cup of coffee. Anything good in the food line? Something smells good. What is it? Mushrooms—just the very thing! I like mushrooms. Remind one of early risings and misty mornings. How are you, Dicky? Alice, give me some coffee, there's a dear. Hello, Colling! any news?"

Her chatter was more general than addressed to any particular person, and she didn't seem to require any answer to her questions. At anyrate, nobody made any answer, and there was an uncomfortable silence as Peggy began her breakfast.

"You're a jolly lot," she said after a minute or so. "What's up with you all? These mushrooms are nice. Dicky, pass the toast. What? I thought you said something, Alice."

Lady Attwill shook her head. "No," she answered in a rather strained voice.

There was another silence. Suddenly Peggy put down her knife and fork with a little clatter and rose from her chair. "This room is horribly stuffy," she said, going to the window. "There, that's better. Oh! what a lovely morning! Dear old Paris! how I do love it!"

She seemed restless and unable to remain long in one position, and soon she had fluttered back to the breakfast-table.

"Alice," she said, "please pour me out another cup of coffee.—Well, Dicky, I put my foot into it nicely last night, didn't I?"

"Yes, you jolly well did," Lord Ellerdine answered shortly.

"I knew what you wanted to talk about, Dicky," she said.

Collingwood interposed. "Peggy, don't go on like that. I have explained it to Dicky."

"Were you quite the one to explain?" she asked.

"Well," Collingwood replied, "it was my fault I rushed you into the train."

Lord Ellerdine started. Something already beginning to be familiar had penetrated his consciousness. "We all got on the wrong train," he said.

"Oh! All?" Peggy asked.

"Yes," said the diplomatist—"yes—no—that's what we're going to say."

"To whom?" asked Peggy.

"Well—well—to—well, to anyone who wants to know."

"Who should want to know?" Peggy asked.

"Oh, no one, Peggy," said Lady Attwill; "but it's best to be prepared, you know."

"But I don't know. Why should I know? Be prepared for what?"

"Nothing, dear, absolutely nothing. Only, some chatty fool might ask."

"Ask what?"

"Well—awkward questions."

"About getting on the wrong train?"

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