‘No, I don’t,’ he said plumply.

‘And yet you prefer to go no further?’

‘And yet I prefer to go no further.’

‘And this Teresa, who frequents circuses and chalk-pits, and faints at midnight—what sort of a girl is she?’

‘Miss Craig is a very beautiful woman,’ said Richard stiffly.

He tried hard to speak in a natural tone of voice, but failed.

‘She has bewitched you, Redgrave,’ said Lord Dolmer. ‘It is a clear case. She has bewitched you. This won’t do at all—my unimpressionable Redgrave knocked over by a country girl of nineteen or so!’

He rubbed his hands together, and then lighted another cigarette.

Richard pulled himself together, and replied, smiling:

‘Not at all.... But really, Lord Dolmer, I want to throw the thing up. So far from Miss Craig having bewitched me, I shall, in all probability, never see her again.’