him at
the Cafe Royal and wished to paint him, so he asked him to come to the
studio."

"And he has painted a portrait of him?"

"Yes."

"Is it a good one?"

"Yes, wonderful!" she said, with a shudder.

"I mean really is it a good likeness?"

"Oh! Yes, it is very like in a way, horribly like."

"In a way?"

"I mean that it gives the worst side. But it is like."

"I suppose the portrait is still in Mr. Garstin's studio?"

"I suppose it is. I haven't seen Mr. Garstin for two or three days. But
I suppose it's there."

"Please give me the Mr. Garstin's address--the studio address," said Sir
Seymour.

"Yes."

She got up again and went to the writing-table. There seemed to her to
be something deadly in this interview. She could not feel humanity in
it. Sir Seymour was terribly impersonal. There was something almost
machine like about him. She did not know him well, but how different
he had been to her in Berkeley Square! There he had been a charming
old courtier. He had shown a sort of gallant admiration of her. He had
beamed kindly upon her youth and her daring. Now he showed nothing.

But--Adela had told him!

She wrote down Dick Garstin's address in Glebe Place, and was about to
come away from the writing-table when Sir Seymour said:

"Could you also kindly give me your card with a line of introduction to
Mr. Garstin? I don't know him."

"Oh, I will of course!"

She found one of her cards and hesitated.

"What shall I put?" she asked.

"You might put 'To introduce,' and then my name."

"Yes."

She wrote the words on the card.

"Perhaps it might be as well to add '_Please see him_,' and underline
it. I understand Mr. Garstin is a brusque sort of fellow."

"Yes, he is."

She added the words he had suggested.

"It's very--it's more than kind of you to take all this trouble," she
said, again coming to him. "I am ashamed."

She gave him the card. She could not look into his face.

"I am ashamed," she repeated, in a low voice.

"Well now," he said, "try to get the matter off your mind. Don't
give way to useless fears. Most of us fear far more than there is any
occasion for."

He stood up.

"Yes?"

"If you wish for me, call me up. I am at St. James's Palace. But I don't
suppose you will have need of me. By the way, there's one thing more I
perhaps ought to ask you. Forgive me! Has there ever been anything in
the nature of a threat from this fellow?"

"Oh, no!" she said. "No, no, no!