He was too grateful to be suspicious at this sudden compromise with her convictions.

“You’re tremendously good,” he stammered.  “It will be a favor.  And any time that I can....”

“You can be of service to me right now,” she interrupted, gaily.  “Order me a taxi ... that’s a good boy!  I always do so like to pull up at a place in style.”

Stillman paid Lily Condor a third visit that week—­this time in answer to the lady’s telephone message.  She had been to see Claire Robson and her report was anything but rosy.

“Her mother’s perfectly helpless and will be for the rest of her life,” Lily volunteered almost cheerfully.  “And, frankly, I don’t see what is going to become of them.  It seems that Mrs. Robson is a sister of Mrs. Tom Wynne and that dreadful Ffinch-Brown woman.  They both have about as much heart as a cast-iron stove.  Miss Robson didn’t say so in words, but I gathered that she had called both of them off the relief job.  I almost cheered when I realized that fact.  I threw out a hint about there being a possibility of my needing an accompanist.  I said Miss Menzies was ill and perhaps ... and I intimated that there was something more than glory in it.”

“And what did Miss Robson say to that?”

“Oh, she was more self-contained than one would imagine under the circumstances.  She said she would like to think it over.  She put it that way on the score of leaving her mother alone nights.  But, believe me, that young lady is more calculating than she seems.  Of course I didn’t mention terms or anything like that.  I left a good loophole in case you had changed your mind.”

For the moment Stillman was almost persuaded to tell Lily Condor that he had changed his mind.  Not that he had lost interest in Claire, but already he had another plan and there was something disagreeably presumptuous in Mrs. Condor’s tone.  He never remembered having taken anybody into his confidence regarding a personal matter.  The trouble was that he had begun the whole affair under the misapprehension that it was a most impersonal thing.  He still tried to look at it from that angle, but Lily Condor’s manner seemed bent on forcing home the rather disturbing conviction that he had a vital interest in the issue.  She had cut in upon his reserve and he would never quite be able to recover the lost ground.  He felt that she sensed his revulsion, for almost at once she adroitly changed the subject and it did not come to life again during the remainder of his call.

But when he was leaving she thrust an idle finger into the lapel of his coat and said: 

“I think it’s awfully good of you, Ned, to be human enough to want to do something for others.  I watched you as a young man, and when you married....”  His startled look must have halted her, for she released her hold upon him and finished with a shrug.

He said good-by hastily and escaped.  But he wondered, as he found his way out into the street, how long it would be before Mrs. Condor would acquire sufficient boldness to discuss with him what and whom she chose.