Arden laughed and for a moment shed all his mannerisms.
"Yes. What's behind all this?" he asked.
"All this what? All this me? What I do?" Lady Barbara met him unreservedly on his own chosen ground of sincerity, and her voice and smile changed. "I'm behind it. Come, you're quite clever enough to understand. I want to enjoy life and know life and meet people and read books and do things.... I won't be treated like a minor Royalty. The world's full of Jim Lorings. Wherever I go, some one says 'Not there, not there, my child.' And then! Then I go quite mad! You'll like me, I think. Good-bye."
"Good-bye, Lady Lilith."
"Lilith? Who was she? Wasn't she Adam's first wife?"
"She existed before Man tasted of the tree of knowledge; before good and evil came into the world," said Arden impressively.
"I remember. I hope you won't become sententious. That went out with the last of the Wilde plays."
Lady Knightrider was standing in the hall, plump, white-haired and perplexed, peering through her lorgnettes into the street. The messenger-boy had disappeared, and the necklace with him.
"He will take it to Scotland Yard," predicted Arden reassuringly. "And then Lady Barbara will throw it away again for fear of cheating Nemesis. One despaired of meeting honest superstition in these degenerate latter days."