"It has been," the landlady replied, "but he is better now. It all came through his not taking proper care of himself."
"May I see him, do you think?" Lilian Rosenberg inquired.
"I don't know," the landlady grumbled. "He's in a very touchy mood—no one can do nothing right for him. But maybe there won't be any harm in your trying," she added, her eyes wandering to the half-crown in Lilian Rosenberg's fingers.
She opened the door somewhat wider, and Lilian Rosenberg entered. Shiel was immensely surprised to see her. Illness and solitude had very considerably subdued him, and though at first he showed some resentment, he speedily softened under her sympathetic solicitation for his health. She put his room straight and dusted the furniture, got tea for him, and when she had completely won him over by these kindly actions, and made him beg her pardon for ever having spoken harshly to her, she broached the subject all the while uppermost in her mind—the subject of Hamar and Gladys.
"He hasn't the slightest intention of marrying her," she said. "All he wants is to make her his mistress, so as to be able to throw her over the moment he gets tired of her, and then marry some one of title. He is tremendously taken with her of course—her physical beauty, which he had the impudence to tell me surpassed that of any other woman he had seen, appeals strongly to his grossly sensual nature. If she won't give in to him now, she will be obliged to do so in six months' time."
"I don't understand you," Shiel said feebly; "why in six months' time?"
Lilian Rosenberg then told him what she knew about the compact.
"So you see," she added, "that if the final stage is reached no woman will be safe—the trio will have any girl they fancy entirely at their mercy."
"How inconceivably awful!" Shiel exclaimed. "Surely there is some way of stopping them."
"There is only one way," Lilian said slowly, "the union between the three must be broken—they must quarrel, and dissolve partnership."