Stella and Norris Vine lunched together that day in a small West End restaurant. He had telephoned asking her to come, and she had at once thrown over another engagement. They were scarcely seated before he asked her a question.
"Do you know that your cousin is in London?"
"What! Virginia?" Stella exclaimed.
He nodded, and Stella was genuinely amazed.
"Whom did she come with?" she asked. "What does she want here?"
"She came alone, poor little thing," he answered, "and on a wild-goose chase. I never heard anything so pathetic in my life. She ought to be in short frocks, playing with her dolls, and she has come here four thousand miles to a city she knows nothing of, to steal back—well, you know what. One could laugh if it were not so pathetic."
"Little fool!" Stella said, half contemptuously, and yet with a note of regret in her tone.
"I thought, perhaps," Vine said, "you might find out where she is and go and talk common sense to her. If there is anything else we can do, I'd like to, only I hate the thought of a pretty child like that wandering about London on such an absurd quest."
"Do you know where she is to be found?" Stella asked quietly.
"I have no idea," Vine answered. "The last time I saw her was in my own rooms. I am only sorry that I let her go."