Violet's nerves tingled. With her best effort to bury all signs of her mounting hope, she ventured:
"I wish I could help you."
"You, my dear?" Evelyn's eyebrows raised and her contralto voice followed them. "Catch the madam letting anyone but me take charge! You know you're none of you allowed down in the front hall unless you're sent for. Things are ticklish enough, thank you, with that new girl upstairs."
It was almost the first mention that had been made to Violet of the latest captive since the recent day of Evelyn's exposition of the entire traffic. Violet had not dared to ask any more questions than those that she deemed necessary for the perfection of her own plans, and she dared ask none now.
"I do hate the job," Evelyn was continuing, "even if it does mean a few bits extra. Rose says that fellow Dyker is due to-night. She's not fit to see him above all men, and he's the one I most particularly hate to meet, because he was a friend of my friend the doctor and used to call with him now and again at my flat. I always fancy he's making comparisons under those narsty low lids of his."
Violet, in sudden reaction, felt choking with despair.
"I could see him," she said.
But Evelyn's honors sat heavily upon their possessor.
"You're not a trusty yet, my dear, by any manner of means," she responded. "No, no; you will go to your own room after dinner and stay there till you are wanted."
She tilted her sharp chin and strolled kitchenward for a drink; but, though she left behind Her a Violet discouraged, it was not a Violet beaten.