woman. It told
her that Arabian was beyond the pale, that he ought to be in prison. In
prison! That was going very far in attack. To write that, unless it
were true, was to write an atrocious libel. But a jealous woman would do
anything, risk anything to "get her own back."

Nevertheless Miss Van Tuyn felt afraid. This strange and terrible letter
dovetailed with Dick Garstin's warning, and both fitted in as it were
with the underthings in her own mind, with those things which Garstin
had summed up in one word "intuition."

Arabian had taken her news about Garstin quite coolly.

"I will see about that myself," he had said. "But now--"

And then he had made passionate love to her. There had been--she had
noticed it all through her visit--a new pressure in his manner, a new
and, as she now began to think, almost desperate authority in his whole
demeanour. His long reticence, the reserve which had puzzled and alarmed
her, had given place to a frankness, a heat, which had almost swept her
away. She still tingled at the memory of what she had been through. But
now she began to think of it with a certain anxiety. In spite of her
anger against Adela her brain was beginning to work with some of its
normal calmness.

Arabian had been very slow in advances. But now was not he like a man
in great haste, like a man who wished to bring something to a conclusion
rapidly, if possible immediately? Passion for her, perhaps, drove him on
now that at last he had spoken, had held her in his arms. But suppose
he had another reason for haste? He had seen Lady Sellingworth. He knew
that she was a friend of the girl he wanted to marry. Miss Van Tuyn
remembered that he had not welcomed her suggestion that the two couples,
he and she, Lady Sellingworth and Craven, should have coffee together.
He had spoken of the smallness of the tables in the _Bella Napoli_. But
that might have been because he was jealous of Craven.

She read the letter a third time, very slowly and carefully. Then she
put it back into its envelope and rang the bell.

A waiter came.

"It's about seven, isn't it?" she said.

"Half past seven, madam."

"Please bring me up some dinner at once--anything. Bring me a sole and
an omelette. That will do. But I want it as soon as possible."

"Yes, madame."

The waiter went out. Then Miss Van Tuyn went to see old Fanny, and
explained that she must dine alone that evening as she was in a hurry.

"I have to go to Berkeley Sq