Christine’s face quivered.  She did not want to think of the Sunderland; her mother had died there; it would always be associated in her mind with the great tragedy of her life.  She took the letter hesitatingly; she did not know the writing.  She waited till the servant had gone before she opened it.

Jimmy was still turning the leaves of the railway guide feverishly.  At the shutting of the door he turned with a sigh of relief.

“A letter?” Christine was drawing the paper from its envelope; pink paper, smelling faintly of lilies.  Jimmy lit a fresh cigarette.  He walked over to the window and stood looking into the street; a horribly respectable street it was, he thought impatiently, of good-class houses, with windows neatly curtained and knockers carefully polished.

He was really quite anxious to kiss Christine; he was wondering whether she, too, was anxious for him to kiss her.  After a moment he turned a little, and looked at her tentatively.

But Christine was not looking at him; she was sitting with her eyes fixed straight in front of her, a frozen look of horror on her little face.  The letter had tumbled from her lap to the floor.

“Christine!” said Jimmy sharply.  He was really alarmed; he took a big stride over to where she sat; he shook her.  “Christine—­what has happened?  What is the matter?”

She looked at him then; she turned her beautiful eyes to his face, and at sight of them Jimmy caught his breath hard.

“Oh, Christine!” he said almost in a whisper.

His thoughts sped back incongruously to a day in the years that had gone; when he and she had been children together down in the country at Upton House.

He had stolen a gun belonging to the Great Horatio, and they had crept out into the woods together—­he and she—­to shoot rabbits, as he had confidently told her; and instead—­oh, instead they had shot Christine’s favourite dog Ruler.

All his life Jimmy remembered the broken-hearted look in Christine’s eyes when she flung herself down by the fast-stiffening body of her favourite.  And now she was looking like that again; looking at him as if he had broken her heart—­as if——­ Jimmy Challoner backed a step; his face had paled.

“In God’s name, what is it—­what is it?”

And then he saw the letter lying there on the floor between them in all its brazen pinkness.  The faint scent of lilies was wafted to his brain before he stooped and grabbed it up.  He held it at arm’s length while he read it, as if already its writer had become repellent to him.  There was a long, long silence.

The letter had been written two days ago.  Jimmy realised dully that Cynthia must have gone straight from his rooms that evening and sent it; realised that it had been lying at the hotel where Mrs. Wyatt died until now.

Perhaps Cynthia Farrow had not realised what she was doing—­perhaps she judged all women by her own standard; but surely even she would have been more than satisfied with the results could she have seen Christine’s face as she sat there in the big, silent room, with the afternoon sunshine streaming around her.