up close to his elbow, after his impersonal welcome, and asked him if she might introduce him to the young lady who was pouring tea for her, and who, after the brief drama necessary for possessing him of a cup of it, appeared to have no more use for him than Mrs. Westangle herself had.  There were more young men than young women in the room, but he imagined the usual superabundance of girlhood temporarily absent for repair of the fatigues of the journey.  Every girl in the room had at least one man talking to her, and the girl who was pouring tea had one on each side of her and was trying to fix them both with an eye lifted towards each, while she struggled to keep her united gaze watchfully upon the tea-urn and those who came up with cups to be filled or refilled.

Verrian thought his fellow-guests were all amiable enough looking, though he made his reflection that they did not look, any of them, as if they would set the Sound on fire; and again he missed the companion of his arrival.

After he had got his cup of tea, he stood sipping it with a homeless air which he tried to conceal, and cast a furtive eye round the room till it rested upon the laughing face of Miss Macroyd.  A young man was taking away her teacup, and Verrian at once went up and seized his place.

“How did you get here?” she asked, rather shamelessly, since she had kept him from coming in the victoria, but amusingly, since she seemed to see it as a joke, if she saw it at all.

“I walked,” he answered.

“Truly?”

“No, not truly.”

“But, truly, how did you?  Because I sent the carriage back for you.”

“That was very thoughtful of you.  But I found a delightful public vehicle behind the station, and I came in that.  I’m so glad to know that it wasn’t Mrs. Westangle who had the trouble of sending the carriage back for me.”

Miss Macroyd laughed and laughed at his resentment.  “But surely you met it on the way?  I gave the man a description of you.  Didn’t he stop for you?”

“Oh yes, but I was too proud to change by that time.  Or perhaps I hated the trouble.”

Miss Macroyd laughed the more; then she purposely darkened her countenance so as to suit it to her lugubrious whisper, “How did she get here?”

“What she?”

“The mysterious fugitive.  Wasn’t she coming here, after all?”

“After all your trouble in supposing so?” Verrian reflected a moment, and then he said, deliberately, “I don’t know.”

Miss Macroyd was not going to let him off like that.  “You don’t know how she came, or you don’t know whether she was coming?”

“I didn’t say.”

Her laugh resounded again.  “Now you are trying to be wicked, and that is very wrong for a novelist.”

“But what object could I have in concealing the fact from you, Miss Macroyd?” he entreated, with mock earnestness.

“That is what I want to find out.”