s."

"Good morning, my dear fellow." Sir Tobias was as courtly and friendly
as ever. "I called you up to know whether you could run round to see me
between now and the forenoon. Yes, the matter I mentioned to you last
night. About eleven, you say? Very well, then, I shall expect you."

VII

No sooner had the butler with the velvet-plush manners admitted him than
he found himself face to face with Terry. She must have known that he
was expected and have been lying in wait for him. Before he could say a
word, she pressed a finger to her lips, signaling caution. To the butler
she said in a low tone, "It's all right, James; you don't need to wait.
I'll announce Lord Taborley." The discreet James showed a fitting
appreciation of romance by folding his plump hands across the pit of his
stomach, making the ghost of a bow and tiptoeing noiselessly into the
nether regions with the stealth of a conspirator.

Terry's face was a picture of innocence. After Maisie she struck him as
very young--much too young to love or to know the meaning of love. The
sight of her freshness was forbidding. It made him seem jaded. It filled
him with a reverence that was not far short of worship. He felt it
impossible to think of her as performing the ordinary acts of a mortal
world. He had the feeling that she moved on higher levels--that she was
a creature too shy and perfect to be made the instrument of passion. She
should be guarded in her purity like a vestal virgin, so that her
straight young body might be forever valiant and her eyes might never
learn the cowardice of tears.

In the brave March sunlight which shafted down on her, her head looked
more like a Botticelli angel's than ever. The raw gold of her bobbed
hair shone solid as metal, making a sharp edge where it ended against
the ivory pallor of her throat. She was dressed in a white tailor-made
serge. Her violet eyes danced with eager secrets.

"What are you doing to-day?" she whispered.

"Nothing!" he whispered, "if you want me."

"Then invite me out to lunch. I've such heaps to tell you. Don't let
Daddy take you to his club--I know he's going to ask you. And, oh,
before I forget, I've told them nothing about yesterday, so don't give
me away by accident." Then in a sly aside, just as she was turning the
door-knob to admit him to her father's library, "You've been getting on
famously with Maisie, haven't you?"

Before he could reply, they were across the threshold. There was