He stood by the door all the time he spoke, and his colourless face and pale eyes never altered.

“You’re talking absolute nonsense,” said Mrs. Wilder, preserving an amiable tone.  “We have to entertain, Draycott, and you can’t round on me for what I have done for years.  It has helped you on, and you know it.”

“I wasn’t talking of that,” he said drearily.  “I was talking of you.  You’re getting old, for a woman, Clarice, and when you’re worried, as you are to-day, you show it; though how an imbecile like Hartley got at you to the extent of making you worried, I don’t pretend to guess.”

“Old,” she said angrily.  “You aren’t troubling to be particularly polite.”

“No, I’m damnably truthful; just because it makes me wonder at you all the more.  You can go on smiling at any number of idiots, because you must have the applause, I suppose.  You don’t even believe in it—­now.”

His allusion was definite, and Mrs. Wilder felt about in her mind for some way to change the conversation.  Quagmires are bad ground for walking, and she was in a hurry to reach terra firma again.  She came round the table and slipped her arm through his.

“After all these years.  Draycott—­be a little generous.”

If she had fought him, some deep, hidden anger in his cold heart would have flared up, but her gesture softened him and he patted her hand.

“I know,” he said slowly.  “Only I can’t quite forget.  I simply can’t, Clarice.”

She smiled at him and touched his face with a light hand.

“Shall I tell you why?  Because even if I am old—­and thirty-six isn’t so very dreadful—­you are still in love with me.”

She went with him to the door and smiled as he drove away, smiled and waved as he reappeared round a distant bend, and watched him return her signal, and then she went back into the large drawing-room and her face grew grey and pinched, and she sat with her chin propped on her hands, thinking.

She had proved that there are more fools in the world than those who go about disguised as Heads of Police, and had added another specimen to the general list, but she found no mirth in the idea as she considered it.

X

IN WHICH CRAVEN JOICEY IS OVERCOME BY A SUDDEN INDISPOSITION, AND HARTLEY, WITHOUT LOOKING FOR HIM, FINDS THE MAN HE WANTED

It seemed to Hartley that Fate had dealt very hardly with him.  He was interested in the case of the boy Absalom, and he felt that the possibility of clearing it up was well within reach, and then he found himself face to face with an unpleasant and painful duty.

All his gregarious sociable nature cried out against any act that would cause a scandal in Mangadone, the magnitude of which he could hardly gauge but only guess at; and yet, wherever he went, the thought haunted him.  His feelings gave him no rest, and he remained inactive and listless for several days after his ride with Mrs. Wilder.  If she had told him that she implored him personally to drop the case he could not have felt more certain that she desired him to do so.  She worked indirectly upon his feelings, a much surer way with some natures than a direct appeal, and the thought brought something akin to misery into the mind and heart of the police officer.