he big couch, mind and body alike dazed and
incapable of making any effort to understand the meaning of this oddly
insistent noise.

He was only conscious of a desire for it to cease; of a longing, not
sufficiently vivid to be acute, but the strongest emotion of which he
was at the moment capable, for a return to the silence which had
hitherto prevailed; and although the noise disturbed and angered him it
never occurred to him that to answer the summons would be the best way
of ending the irritating sound.

So that bell too went unanswered; and in due course it also ceased to
ring.

But that was not to be the end.

Dimly he heard the sound of voices, of footsteps in the hall, of the
striking of a match and the hissing of the gas. Then there was a
confused noise which was like and yet unlike a rapping on the panels of
the door of the room in which he sat; but he felt no inclination
whatever to move or make any response; and even when at length the door
itself opened, slowly and tentatively, he merely looked up with languid
curiosity to see what these phenomena might imply.

* * * * *

And in the doorway stood Iris Wayne, her face very pale, one hand
holding a flimsy scarf about her, with Bruce Cheniston by her side.

CHAPTER XII

Chloe Carstairs had not been among the guests at Greengates that
afternoon. In vain had Sir Richard and Lady Laura invited her, in vain
had Iris added her entreaties. On this point Chloe was adamant, and
although her brother argued with her for an hour or more on the
advisability of making her reappearance in Littlefield society under the
aegis of the Waynes, she merely shook her head with an inscrutable
smile.

"If I cared to re-enter Littlefield society," she said calmly, "I should
have done so long ago. But I am really so indifferent to those people
that I have no desire to meet them, even as a guest at Greengates."

"I didn't suppose you wanted to meet them--for your own sake," retorted
her brother, "for a duller and more stupid set of people were never
born; but as Iris is to be your sister-in-law I think you might stretch
a point and go with me to Greengates this afternoon."

But Chloe shook her head.

"No, Bruce. I am sorry to disappoint you, but it cannot be done. As you
know, I am fond of Iris"--knowing his sister Bruce was quite satisfied
with this moderate expression of her affection--"but I won't go to
Greengates to-day, nor to t