“Oh, this is for quite a different sort of thing,” he explained.  “Not devoted to society news at all:  more for caricatures and funny bits.”

“Oh, then I should certainly not wish my name to appear in that,” returned her ladyship, her tone adding that, on the other hand, such a publication was as suitable as it was welcome to a portrait of me.

“Now, Elise, I wish you to take those things off at once, and come to my room,” she finished.  “Mind, I don’t want you should keep me waiting!  And you can hand over that bag.”

No hope of another word between us!  Mr. Jack Dane saw this, and that it would be unwise to try for it.  Pocketing the sketch-book, he saluted Lady Turnour with a finger to the height of his eyebrows, which gesture visibly added to her sense of importance.  Then, without glancing at me, he turned and walked off.

It was not until he had disappeared round the bend of the corridor that her ladyship thought it right to leave me.

I knew that she had made this little expedition in search of her maid with the sole object of seeing what the mouse did while the cat was away—­a trick worthy of her lodging-house past!  And I knew equally well that before I tapped at her door a little later she had examined the contents of the blue bag to make sure that I had extracted nothing.  How I pity the long procession of “slaveys” who must have followed each other drearily in that lodging-house under the landlady’s jurisdiction.  They, poor dears, could have had no chauffeur friends to save them from daily perils, and it isn’t likely that their mistress allowed such luxuries as postmen or policemen.

CHAPTER XI

I decided to have my breakfast very early next morning, and would have thought it a coincidence that Mr. Dane should walk into the couriers’ room at the same time if he hadn’t coolly told me that he had been lying in wait for me to appear.

“I thought, for several reasons, you would be early,” he said.  “So, for all the same reasons and several more, I thought I’d be early too.  I had to know what the situation was to be.”

“The situation?” I repeated blankly.

“Between us.  Am I to understand that we’ve quarrelled?”

“We had,” I said.  “But even on good grounds, it’s difficult to keep on quarrelling with a person who has not only brought up your dinner and sauced it with good advice, but saved you from—­from the dickens of a scrape.”

“I hope she didn’t row you any more afterward?”

“No.  She was too much interested, all the time I was undressing her, in speculating about Monsieur Charretier to Sir Samuel.  It seems that they struck up an acquaintance over their coffee on the strength of a little episode in the hall.