om.

"Helen, do come and listen to Captain Griffiths! He is making me feel
quite creepy. There are secrets about, it seems, and he wants to know
all about Mr. Lessingham."

Helen smiled with complete self-possession.

"Well, we can set his mind at rest about Mr. Lessingham, can't we?" she
observed, as she shook hands.

"We can do more," Philippa declared. "We can help him to judge for
himself. We are expecting Mr. Lessingham for dinner, Captain Griffiths.
Do stay."

"I couldn't think of taking you by storm like this," Captain Griffiths
replied, with a wistfulness which only made his voice sound hoarser and
more unpleasant. "It is most kind of you, Lady Cranston. Perhaps you
will give me another opportunity."

"I sha'n't think of it," Philippa insisted. "You must stay and dine
to-night. We shall be a partie carrie, for Nora goes to bed directly
after dinner. I am ringing the bell to tell Mills to set an extra
place," she added.

Captain Griffiths abandoned himself to fate with a little shiver of
complacency. He welcomed Lessingham, who was presently announced, with
very much less than his usual reserve, and the dinner was in every way
a success. Towards its close, Philippa became a little thoughtful.
She glanced more than once at Lessingham, who was sitting by her side,
almost in admiration. His conversation, gay at times, always polished,
was interlarded continually with those little social reminiscences
inevitable amongst men moving in a certain circle of English society.
Apparently Richard Felstead was not the only one of his college friends
with whom he had kept in touch. The last remnants of Captain Griffiths'
suspicions seemed to vanish with their second glass of port, although
his manner became in no way more genial.

"Don't you think you are almost a little too daring?" Philippa asked her
favoured guest as he helped her afterwards to set out a bridge table.

"One adapts one's methods to one's adversary," he murmured, with a
smile, "Your friend Captain Griffiths had only the very conventional
suspicions. The mention of a few good English names, acquaintance with
the ordinary English sports, is quite sufficient with a man like that."

Helen and Griffiths were talking at the other end of the room. Philippa
raised her eyes to her companion's.

"You become more of a mystery than ever," she declared. "You are making
me even curious. Tell me really why you have paid us this visit from the
clouds?"

She w