iting on the ground floor. She knew it
would grieve George and Rose Winter to guess that she had come expecting
to stay. Downstairs she spoke to the concierge, saying she would return
with a cab to fetch the things away. She would go, she thought, to the
railway station and inquire about trains for Ventimiglia. Then having
settled the hour of departure, she would dispose of a little jewellery
and call in a cab at the Winters' for her luggage.

The sun had set, and the early darkness of the Riviera night had fallen,
though it was only five o'clock, but the Boulevard d'Italie and the
Boulevard des Moulins were brilliantly lighted. The shops looked bright
and enticing, but Mary did not notice them as she would once have done.
She walked quickly, and at the top of the gardens was about to turn down
toward the Casino and more distant railway station when she came upon
Lord and Lady Dauntrey.

If she could she would have avoided them, but it was too late. They were
standing together, talking with great earnestness, and Mary had brushed
against Lord Dauntrey's shoulder on the narrow pavement before she
recognized the pair. Both turned with a start, as if they had been
brought back by a touch from dreams to reality; and a street lamp on the
opposite side of the gardens lighted up their features with a cruel
distinctness. Instantly Mary knew that some terrible thing had happened.
Lord Dauntrey was like a man under sentence of death, and though his
wife's expression was not to be read at a glance, the look in her eyes
arrested Mary. The girl stopped involuntarily, as if Eve had seized her
by the arm. "What is the matter?" she asked, without any preface of
greeting. A conventional "How do you do?" would have been an insulting
mockery flung at those set, white faces.

"For God's sake, tell her not to drive me mad," Dauntrey said in a voice
which was strange to Mary. It was not like his, though she had heard him
speak raspingly when ill luck at the tables had depressed him. It seemed
to her that such a voice might come from one shut up in a cell, or from
a man enclosed in armour with visor down. It was a voice that frightened
her.

"Oh, Lady Dauntrey, what does he mean?"

Eve caught the girl by the hand, holding it tightly, as if she feared
that she might take alarm and run away.

"I've told him that I shall hate him if he's a coward," she answered in
a voice cold and hard as iron.

"If I'm a coward, what are you?" Dauntrey