ut
from a side street and fired three shots at her, wounding her severely.
Miss de Gervais was carried into the theatre, where a doctor who chanced
to be passing rendered first aid. Within a very few minutes the news of
the outrage became known and the theatre was besieged by inquirers. The
would-be assassin, who made good his escape, was a man of unmistakably
foreign appearance."

Diana laid the paper down very quietly. This, then, was the news which
had power to bring that look of fear and dread to her husband's
face--which could instantly wipe out from his mind all thoughts of his
wife and of everything that concerned her.

Perhaps, she reflected scornfully, it was as well that the revelation had
come when it did! Otherwise--otherwise, she had been almost on the verge
of forgetting her just cause for jealousy, forgetting all the past months
of misery, and believing in her husband once again.

The trill of the telephone from below checked her bitter thoughts, and
hurrying downstairs into the hall, she lifted the receiver and held it to
her ear.

"Yes. Who is it?"

Possibly something was wrong with the wire, or perhaps it was only that
Diana's voice, particularly deep and low-pitched for a woman, misled the
speaker at the other end. Whatever it may have been, Adrienne's voice,
rather tremulous and shaky, came through the 'phone, and she was
obviously under the impression that she was speaking to Diana's husband.

"Oh, is that you, Max? Don't be frightened. I'm not badly hurt. I hear
it's already in the papers, and as I knew you'd be nearly mad with
anxiety, I've made the doctor let me 'phone you myself. Of course you
can guess who did it. It was not the man you caught waiting about
outside the theatre. It was the taller one of the two we saw at Charing
Cross that day. Please come round as soon as you can."

Diana's lips set in a straight line. Very deliberately she replaced the
receiver and rang off without reply. A small, fine smile curved her lips
as she reflected that, within a few minutes, Max's arrival at Somervell
Street would enlighten Miss de Gervais as to the fact that she had bean
pouring out her reassuring remarks to the wrong person.

Half an hour later Diana came slowly downstairs, dressed for dinner.
Jerry was waiting for her in the hall.

"There's a 'phone message just come through from Max," he said, a trifle
awkwardly. (Jerry had not lived through the past few months at Lila